Topology

A Möbius strip, an object with only one surface and one edge; such shapes are an object of study in topology.

Topology (Greek Topologia, Τοπολογία, from topos, τόπος, "place," and logos, λόγος, "study") is the branch of mathematics that studies the properties of a space that are preserved under continuous deformations. Topology grew out of geometry, but unlike geometry, topology is not concerned with metric properties such as distances between points. Instead, topology involves the study of properties that describe how a space is assembled, such as connectedness and orientability. Topology lies in the search for solution of a problem relating to the geometry of position in the true sense of the term.

The word topology is used both for the area of study and for a family of sets with certain properties that are used to define a topological space, the most basic object studied in topology. Of particular importance in the study of topology are the deformations called homeomorphisms. Informally, these functions can be thought of as those that stretch space without tearing it apart or sticking distinct parts together. A more abstract notion of deformation is homotopy equivalence, which also plays a fundamental role.

When the discipline was first properly founded, toward the end of the 19th century, it was called geometria situs (Latin geometry of place) and analysis situs (Latin analysis of place). From around 1925 to 1975 it was an important growth area within mathematics.

Topology is a large branch of mathematics that includes many subfields. The most basic and traditional division within topology is point-set topology, which establishes the foundational aspects of topology and investigates concepts as compactness and connectedness; algebraic topology, which generally tries to measure degrees of connectivity using algebraic constructs such as homotopy groups and homology; and geometric topology, which primarily studies manifolds and their embeddings (placements) in other manifolds. Some of the most active areas, such as low dimensional topology, do not fit neatly in this division.

See also: topology glossary for definitions of some of the terms used in topology and topological space for a more technical treatment of the subject.

Contents

History

The Seven Bridges of Königsberg is a famous problem solved by Euler.

The branch of mathematics now called topology began with the investigation of certain questions in geometry. Euler's 1736 paper on Seven Bridges of Königsberg is regarded as one of the first topological results.

The term "Topologie" was introduced in German in 1847 by Johann Benedict Listing in Vorstudien zur Topologie, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen, pp. 67, 1848. However, Listing had already used the word for ten years in correspondence. "Topology," its English form, was introduced in 1883 in the journal Nature to distinguish "qualitative geometry from the ordinary geometry in which quantitative relations chiefly are treated". The term topologist in the sense of a specialist in topology was used in 1905 in the magazine Spectator.

Modern topology depends strongly on the ideas of set theory, developed by Georg Cantor in the later part of the 19th century. Cantor, in addition to setting down the basic ideas of set theory, considered point sets in Euclidean space, as part of his study of Fourier series.

Henri Poincaré published Analysis Situs in 1895, introducing the concepts of homotopy and homology, which are now considered part of algebraic topology.

Maurice Fréchet, unifying the work on function spaces of Cantor, Volterra, Arzelà, Hadamard, Ascoli and others, introduced the metric space in 1906. A metric space is now considered a special case of a general topological space. In 1914, Felix Hausdorff coined the term "topological space" and gave the definition for what is now called a Hausdorff space. In current usage, a topological space is a slight generalization of Hausdorff spaces, given in 1922 by Kazimierz Kuratowski.

For further developments, see point-set topology and algebraic topology.

Elementary introduction

A continuous deformation (homotopy) of a coffee cup into a doughnut (torus) and back.

Topological spaces show up naturally in almost every branch of mathematics. This has made topology one of the great unifying ideas of mathematics.

The motivating insight behind topology is that some geometric problems depend not on the exact shape of the objects involved, but rather on the way they are put together. For example, the square and the circle have many properties in common: they are both one dimensional objects (from a topological point of view) and both separate the plane into two parts, the part inside and the part outside.

One of the first papers in topology was the demonstration, by Leonhard Euler, that it was impossible to find a route through the town of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) that would cross each of its seven bridges exactly once. This result did not depend on the lengths of the bridges, nor on their distance from one another, but only on connectivity properties: which bridges are connected to which islands or riverbanks. This problem, the Seven Bridges of Königsberg, is now a famous problem in introductory mathematics, and led to the branch of mathematics known as graph theory.

Similarly, the hairy ball theorem of algebraic topology says that "one cannot comb the hair flat on a hairy ball without creating a cowlick." This fact is immediately convincing to most people, even though they might not recognize the more formal statement of the theorem, that there is no nonvanishing continuous tangent vector field on the sphere. As with the Bridges of Königsberg, the result does not depend on the exact shape of the sphere; it applies to pear shapes and in fact any kind of smooth blob, as long as it has no holes.

In order to deal with these problems that do not rely on the exact shape of the objects, one must be clear about just what properties these problems do rely on. From this need arises the notion of homeomorphism. The impossibility of crossing each bridge just once applies to any arrangement of bridges homeomorphic to those in Königsberg, and the hairy ball theorem applies to any space homeomorphic to a sphere.

Intuitively, two spaces are homeomorphic if one can be deformed into the other without cutting or gluing. A traditional joke is that a topologist can't distinguish a coffee mug from a doughnut, since a sufficiently pliable doughnut could be reshaped to the form of a coffee cup by creating a dimple and progressively enlarging it, while shrinking the hole into a handle.

Homeomorphism can be considered the most basic topological equivalence. Another is homotopy equivalence. This is harder to describe without getting technical, but the essential notion is that two objects X and Y are homotopy equivalent if there is an object Z such that Z contains both X and Y and Z can be "squished" down in different ways to X and Y. A particularly simple case is when we can take Z to be one of X and Y, let's say X. In this case, Y can be put in X and then X can be squished down to Y.

An introductory exercise is to classify the uppercase letters of the English alphabet according to homeomorphism and homotopy equivalence. The result depends partially on the font used. The figures use a sans-serif font named Myriad. Notice that homotopy equivalence is a rougher relationship than homeomorphism; a homotopy equivalence class can contain several of the homeomorphism classes. The simple case of homotopy equivalence described above can be used here to show two letters are homotopy equivalent, e.g. O fits inside P and the tail of the P can be squished to the "hole" part.

To be sure we have classified the letters correctly, we not only need to show that two letters in the same class are equivalent, but that two letters in different classes are not equivalent. In the case of homeomorphism, this can be done by suitably selecting points and showing their removal disconnects the letters differently. For example, X and Y are not homeomorphic because removing the center point of the X leaves four pieces; whatever point in Y corresponds to this point, its removal can leave at most three pieces. The case of homotopy equivalence is harder and requires a more elaborate argument showing an algebraic invariant, such as the fundamental group, is different on the supposedly differing classes.

Letter topology has some practical relevance in stencil typography. The font Braggadocio, for instance, has stencils that are made of one connected piece of material.

Mathematical definition

Main article: Topological space

Let X be any set and let T be a family of subsets of X. Then T is a topology on X if

  1. Both the empty set and X are elements of T.
  2. Any union of arbitrarily many elements of T is an element of T.
  3. Any intersection of finitely many elements of T is an element of T.

If T is a topology on X, then X together with T is called a topological space.

All sets in T are called open; note that in general not all subsets of X need be in T. A subset of X is said to be closed if its complement is in T (i.e., it is open). A subset of X may be open, closed, both, or neither.

A function or map from one topological space to another is called continuous if the inverse image of any open set is open. If the function maps the real numbers to the real numbers (both space with the Standard Topology), then this definition of continuous is equivalent to the definition of continuous in calculus. If a continuous function is one-to-one and onto and if the inverse of the function is also continuous, then the function is called a homeomorphism and the domain of the function is said to be homeomorphic to the range. Another way of saying this is that the function has a natural extension to the topology. If two spaces are homeomorphic, they have identical topological properties, and are considered to be topologically the same. The cube and the sphere are homeomorphic, as are the coffee cup and the doughnut. But the circle is not homeomorphic to the doughnut.

Topology topics

Some theorems in general topology

General topology also has some surprising connections to other areas of mathematics. For example:

Some useful notions from algebraic topology

See also list of algebraic topology topics.

Generalizations

Occasionally, one needs to use the tools of topology but a "set of points" is not available. In pointless topology one considers instead the lattice of open sets as the basic notion of the theory, while Grothendieck topologies are certain structures defined on arbitrary categories which allow the definition of sheaves on those categories, and with that the definition of quite general cohomology theories.

Topology in art and literature

See also

  • Covering map
  • Counterexamples in Topology
  • Differential topology
  • Digital topology
  • Geometric topology
  • Publications in topology
  • Link topology
  • Topological graph theory
  • List of general topology topics
  • List of geometric topology topics
  • Mereotopology
  • Network topology
  • Topology glossary
  • Topological space
  • Topology of the universe
  • Topological Quantum Computing
  • Topological quantum field theory
  • Water, gas, and electricity

References

Further reading

External links

Topics in Topology
Fields
Topological spaces • General (point set) topology • Set-theoretic topology • Algebraic topology • Homology theory • Cohomology theory • Differential topology • Geometric topology • Combinatorial topology • 'Continuum theory
Key concepts
Open set, closed set • Continuity • Compact space • Uniform spaces • Metric spaces • Hausdorff space • Homotopy theory • Homotopy groups • Fundamental group • Simplicial complexes • CW complexes • Exact sequence • Homological algebra • K-theory
Lists and glossaries
Glossary of general topology • List of general topology topics • List of algebraic topology topics
Major fields of mathematics