Klein bottle

The Klein bottle immersed in three-dimensional space.

In mathematics, the Klein bottle ([kla͡ɪn]) is a non-orientable surface, informally, a surface (a two-dimensional manifold) with no identifiable "inner" and "outer" sides. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a two-dimensional surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary. (For comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary.)

The Klein bottle was first described in 1882 by the German mathematician Felix Klein. It was originally named the Kleinsche Fläche "Klein surface"; however, this was incorrectly interpreted as Kleinsche Flasche "Klein bottle," which ultimately led to the adoption of this term in the German language as well.

1 Construction
2 Properties
3 Dissection
4 Simple-closed curves
5 Parameterization
6 Generalizations
7 Klein surface
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 External links

Construction

Start with a square, and then glue together corresponding colored edges, in the following diagram, so that the arrows match. More formally, the Klein bottle is the quotient space described as the square [0,1] × [0,1] with sides identified by the relations (0, y) ~ (1, y) for 0 ≤ y ≤ 1 and (x, 0) ~ (1 − x, 1) for 0 ≤ x ≤ 1:

This square is a fundamental polygon of the Klein bottle.

Note that this is an "abstract" gluing in the sense that trying to realize this in three dimensions results in a self-intersecting Klein bottle. The Klein bottle, proper, does not self-intersect. Nonetheless, there is a way to visualize the Klein bottle as being contained in four dimensions.

Glue the red arrows of the square together (left and right sides), resulting in a cylinder. To glue the ends together so that the arrows on the circles match, pass one end through the side of the cylinder. Note that this creates a circle of self-intersection. This is an immersion of the Klein bottle in three dimensions.

By adding a fourth dimension to the three dimensional space, the self-intersection can be eliminated. Gently push a piece of the tube containing the intersection out of the original three dimensional space. A useful analogy is to consider a self-intersecting curve on the plane; self-intersections can be eliminated by lifting one strand off the plane.

This immersion is useful for visualizing many properties of the Klein bottle. For example, the Klein bottle has no boundary, where the surface stops abruptly, and it is non-orientable, as reflected in the one-sidedness of the immersion.

A hand-blown Klein Bottle (emulation)

The common physical model of a Klein bottle is a similar construction. The British Science Museum has on display a collection of hand-blown glass Klein bottles, exhibiting many variations on this topological theme. The bottles date from 1995 and were made for the museum by Alan Bennett.^[1]

Properties

The Klein bottle can be seen as a fiber bundle over S¹ as follows: one takes the square (modulo the edge identifying equivalence relation) from above to be E, the total space, while the base space B is given by the unit interval in y, modulo 1~0. The projection π is then given by π([x, y]) = [y].

Like the Möbius strip, the Klein bottle is a two-dimensional differentiable manifold which is not orientable. Unlike the Möbius strip, the Klein bottle is a closed manifold, meaning it is a compact manifold without boundary. While the Möbius strip can be embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space R³, the Klein bottle cannot. It can be embedded in R⁴, however.

The Klein bottle can be constructed (in a mathematical sense, because it cannot be done without allowing the surface to intersect itself) by joining the edges of two Möbius strips together, as described in the following anonymous limerick:

A mathematician named Klein

Thought the Möbius band was divine.

Said he: "If you glue

The edges of two,

You'll get a weird bottle like mine."

It can also be constructed by folding a Möbius strip in half lengthwise and attaching the edge to itself.

Six colors suffice to color any map on the surface of a Klein bottle; this is the only exception to the Heawood conjecture, a generalization of the four color theorem, which would require seven.

A Klein bottle is equivalent to a sphere plus two cross caps.

Dissection

Dissecting the Klein bottle results in Möbius strips.

Dissecting a Klein bottle into halves along its plane of symmetry results in two mirror image Möbius strips, i.e. one with a left-handed half-twist and the other with a right-handed half-twist (one of these is pictured on the right). Remember that the intersection pictured isn't really there. In fact, it is also possible to cut the Klein bottle into a single Möbius strip.

Simple-closed curves

One description of the types of simple-closed curves that may appear on the surface of the Klein bottle is given by the use of the first homology group of the Klein bottle calculated with integer coefficients. This group is isomorphic to Z×Z₂. Up to reversal of orientation, the only homology classes which contain simple-closed curves are as follows: (0,0), (1,0), (1,1), (2,0), (0,1). Up to reversal of the orientation of a simple closed curve, if it lies within one of the two crosscaps that make up the Klein bottle, then it is in homology class (1,0) or (1,1); if it cuts the Klein bottle into two Möbius bands, then it is in homology class (2,0); if it cuts the Klein bottle into an annulus, then it is in homology class (0,1); and if bounds a disk, then it is in homology class (0,0).

Parameterization

The "figure 8" immersion of the Klein bottle.

The "figure 8" immersion (Klein bagel) of the Klein bottle has a particularly simple parameterization. It is that of a "figure-8" torus with a 180 degree "Mobius" twist inserted:

$\begin{array}{rcl} x & = & \left(r + \cos\frac{u}{2}\sin v - \sin\frac{u}{2}\sin 2v\right) \cos u\\ y & = & \left(r + \cos\frac{u}{2}\sin v - \sin\frac{u}{2}\sin 2v\right) \sin u\\ z & = & \sin\frac{u}{2}\sin v + \cos\frac{u}{2}\sin 2v \end{array}$

In this immersion, the self-intersection circle is a geometric circle in the xy plane. The positive constant r is the radius of this circle. The parameter u gives the angle in the xy plane, and v specifies the position around the 8-shaped cross section.

The parameterization of the 3-dimensional immersion of the bottle itself is much more complicated. Here is a simplified version:

$\begin{align} x & = \frac{ \sqrt{2} f(u) \cos u \cos v (3\cos^{2}u - 1) - 2\cos 2u}{80\pi^{3}g(u)}-\frac{3\cos u -3}{4}\\ y & = -\frac{f(u)\sin v}{60\pi^{3}}\\ z & = -\frac{\sqrt{2}f(u)\sin u \,\cos v}{15\pi^{3}g(u)}+\frac{\sin u \cos^{2} u + \sin u}{4}-\frac{\sin u\,\cos u}{2} \end{align}$

where

$f(u) = 20u^{3}-65\pi u^{2}+50\pi^{2}u-16\pi^{3}\,$

$g(u) = \sqrt{8\cos^{2}2u-\cos 2u (24\cos^{3}u-8\cos u + 15) + 6\cos^{4}u (1 - 3\sin^{2}u)+17}$

for 0 ≤ u < 2π and 0 ≤ v < 2π.

In this parameterization, u follows the length of the bottle's body while v goes around its circumference.

Generalizations

The generalization of the Klein bottle to higher genus is given in the article on the fundamental polygon.

In another order of ideas, constructing 3-manifolds, it is known that a solid Klein bottle is topologically equivalent with the Cartesian product: $\scriptstyle M\ddot{o}\times I$ , the Mobius band times an interval. The solid Klein bottle is the non-orientable version of the solid torus, equivalent to $\scriptstyle D^2\times S^1$ .

Klein surface

A Klein surface is, as for Riemann surfaces, a surface with an atlas allowing the transition functions to be composed using complex conjugation. One can obtain the so called dianalytic structure of the space.

Notes

↑ Strange Surfaces: New Ideas

References

Weisstein, Eric W., "Klein Bottle" from MathWorld.
A classical on the theory of Klein surfaces is [1] of Alling-Greenleaf

External links

Imaging Maths - The Klein Bottle
The biggest Klein bottle in all the world
Klein Bottle animation: produced for a topology seminar at the Leibniz University Hannover. [2]
Klein Bottle animation from 2010 including a car ride through the bottle and the original description by Felix Klein: produced at the Free University Berlin.
Torus Games Free downloadable games for Windows and Mac OS X that highlight the topologies of the Torus and Klein Bottle.

This article incorporates material from Klein bottle on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.