A Short Course in Differential Topology

Concise and modern introduction to differential topology with a hands-on approach and plentiful examples and exercises.

Bjørn Ian Dundas (Author)

9781108425797, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 June 2018

262 pages, 95 b/w illus. 230 exercises
26 x 18.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.71 kg

'... the author writes in a style that students will enjoy reading: the book is quite clear, chatty to the point of being colloquial ... and filled with helpful examples ... [It] serves beautifully as a first look at this material, and does a splendid job of preparing the reader for more sophisticated accounts of the subject.' Mark Hunacek, The Mathematical Gazette

Manifolds are abound in mathematics and physics, and increasingly in cybernetics and visualization where they often reflect properties of complex systems and their configurations. Differential topology gives us the tools to study these spaces and extract information about the underlying systems. This book offers a concise and modern introduction to the core topics of differential topology for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. It covers the basics on smooth manifolds and their tangent spaces before moving on to regular values and transversality, smooth flows and differential equations on manifolds, and the theory of vector bundles and locally trivial fibrations. The final chapter gives examples of local-to-global properties, a short introduction to Morse theory and a proof of Ehresmann's fibration theorem. The treatment is hands-on, including many concrete examples and exercises woven into the text, with hints provided to guide the student.

1. Introduction
2. Smooth manifolds
3. The tangent space
4. Regular values
5. Vector bundles
6. Constructions on vector bundles
7. Integrability
8. Local phenomena that go global
Appendix A. Point set topology
Appendix B. Hints or solutions to exercises
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Topology [PBP], Differential & Riemannian geometry [PBMP]