Differential geometry of surfacesIn mathematics, the differential geometry of surfaces deals with the differential geometry of smooth surfaces with various additional structures, most often, a Riemannian metric. Surfaces have been extensively studied from various perspectives: extrinsically, relating to their embedding in Euclidean space and intrinsically, reflecting their properties determined solely by the distance within the surface as measured along curves on the surface.
Theorema EgregiumGauss's Theorema Egregium (Latin for "Remarkable Theorem") is a major result of differential geometry, proved by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1827, that concerns the curvature of surfaces. The theorem says that Gaussian curvature can be determined entirely by measuring angles, distances and their rates on a surface, without reference to the particular manner in which the surface is embedded in the ambient 3-dimensional Euclidean space. In other words, the Gaussian curvature of a surface does not change if one bends the surface without stretching it.
Gauss–Bonnet theoremIn the mathematical field of differential geometry, the Gauss–Bonnet theorem (or Gauss–Bonnet formula) is a fundamental formula which links the curvature of a surface to its underlying topology. In the simplest application, the case of a triangle on a plane, the sum of its angles is 180 degrees. The Gauss–Bonnet theorem extends this to more complicated shapes and curved surfaces, connecting the local and global geometries. The theorem is named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, who developed a version but never published it, and Pierre Ossian Bonnet, who published a special case in 1848.
GeometryGeometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer. Until the 19th century, geometry was almost exclusively devoted to Euclidean geometry, which includes the notions of point, line, plane, distance, angle, surface, and curve, as fundamental concepts.
CurvatureIn mathematics, curvature is any of several strongly related concepts in geometry. Intuitively, the curvature is the amount by which a curve deviates from being a straight line, or a surface deviates from being a plane. For curves, the canonical example is that of a circle, which has a curvature equal to the reciprocal of its radius. Smaller circles bend more sharply, and hence have higher curvature. The curvature at a point of a differentiable curve is the curvature of its osculating circle, that is the circle that best approximates the curve near this point.
Second fundamental formIn differential geometry, the second fundamental form (or shape tensor) is a quadratic form on the tangent plane of a smooth surface in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, usually denoted by (read "two"). Together with the first fundamental form, it serves to define extrinsic invariants of the surface, its principal curvatures. More generally, such a quadratic form is defined for a smooth immersed submanifold in a Riemannian manifold. The second fundamental form of a parametric surface S in R3 was introduced and studied by Gauss.
Stereographic projectionIn mathematics, a stereographic projection is a perspective projection of the sphere, through a specific point on the sphere (the pole or center of projection), onto a plane (the projection plane) perpendicular to the diameter through the point. It is a smooth, bijective function from the entire sphere except the center of projection to the entire plane. It maps circles on the sphere to circles or lines on the plane, and is conformal, meaning that it preserves angles at which curves meet and thus locally approximately preserves shapes.
Principal curvatureIn differential geometry, the two principal curvatures at a given point of a surface are the maximum and minimum values of the curvature as expressed by the eigenvalues of the shape operator at that point. They measure how the surface bends by different amounts in different directions at that point. At each point p of a differentiable surface in 3-dimensional Euclidean space one may choose a unit normal vector. A normal plane at p is one that contains the normal vector, and will therefore also contain a unique direction tangent to the surface and cut the surface in a plane curve, called normal section.
Map projectionIn cartography, a map projection is any of a broad set of transformations employed to represent the curved two-dimensional surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitude, of locations from the surface of the globe are transformed to coordinates on a plane. Projection is a necessary step in creating a two-dimensional map and is one of the essential elements of cartography. All projections of a sphere on a plane necessarily distort the surface in some way and to some extent.
HyperboloidIn geometry, a hyperboloid of revolution, sometimes called a circular hyperboloid, is the surface generated by rotating a hyperbola around one of its principal axes. A hyperboloid is the surface obtained from a hyperboloid of revolution by deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation. A hyperboloid is a quadric surface, that is, a surface defined as the zero set of a polynomial of degree two in three variables.
First fundamental formIn differential geometry, the first fundamental form is the inner product on the tangent space of a surface in three-dimensional Euclidean space which is induced canonically from the dot product of R3. It permits the calculation of curvature and metric properties of a surface such as length and area in a manner consistent with the ambient space. The first fundamental form is denoted by the Roman numeral I, Let X(u, v) be a parametric surface. Then the inner product of two tangent vectors is where E, F, and G are the coefficients of the first fundamental form.
Differential geometryDifferential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky.
Riemann curvature tensorIn the mathematical field of differential geometry, the Riemann curvature tensor or Riemann–Christoffel tensor (after Bernhard Riemann and Elwin Bruno Christoffel) is the most common way used to express the curvature of Riemannian manifolds. It assigns a tensor to each point of a Riemannian manifold (i.e., it is a tensor field). It is a local invariant of Riemannian metrics which measures the failure of the second covariant derivatives to commute. A Riemannian manifold has zero curvature if and only if it is flat, i.
PseudosphereIn geometry, a pseudosphere is a surface with constant negative Gaussian curvature. A pseudosphere of radius R is a surface in having curvature −1/R2 in each point. Its name comes from the analogy with the sphere of radius R, which is a surface of curvature 1/R2. The term was introduced by Eugenio Beltrami in his 1868 paper on models of hyperbolic geometry. TOC The same surface can be also described as the result of revolving a tractrix about its asymptote. For this reason the pseudosphere is also called tractroid.
Gauss mapIn differential geometry, the Gauss map (named after Carl F. Gauss) maps a surface in Euclidean space R3 to the unit sphere S2. Namely, given a surface X lying in R3, the Gauss map is a continuous map N: X → S2 such that N(p) is a unit vector orthogonal to X at p, namely a normal vector to X at p. The Gauss map can be defined (globally) if and only if the surface is orientable, in which case its degree is half the Euler characteristic. The Gauss map can always be defined locally (i.e. on a small piece of the surface).
Surface (topology)In the part of mathematics referred to as topology, a surface is a two-dimensional manifold. Some surfaces arise as the boundaries of three-dimensional solid figures; for example, the sphere is the boundary of the solid ball. Other surfaces arise as graphs of functions of two variables; see the figure at right. However, surfaces can also be defined abstractly, without reference to any ambient space. For example, the Klein bottle is a surface that cannot be embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space.
