Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Closed manifold

Encyclopedia : C : CL : CLO : Closed manifold


In mathematics, a closed manifold, or compact manifold, is a manifold that is compact as a topological space. In contexts where manifold includes manifolds with boundary, a closed manifold is defined as a compact manifold without boundary (whereas a compact manifold may have a boundary).

These manifolds are those that are, in an intuitive sense, finite. The simplest example in one dimension is a circle, which is closed while the real line is not. By the basic properties of compactness, a closed manifold is the disjoint union of a finite number of connected closed manifolds. One of the most basic objectives of geometric topology is to understand what the supply of possible closed manifolds is.

Other examples of closed manifolds are the torus and the Klein bottle.

All compact topological manifolds can be embedded into [\mathbb^n] for some n.

 


From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: