Topology

In mathematics, topology is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling and bending, but not tearing or gluing. A topological space is a set endowed with a structure, called a topology, which allows defining continuous deformation of subspaces, and, more generally, all kinds of continuity. Euclidean spaces, and, more generally, metric spaces are examples of a topological space, as any distance or metric defines a topology. The deformations that are considered in topology are homeomorphisms and homotopies. A property that is invariant under such deformations is a topological property. Basic examples of topological properties are: the dimension, which allows distinguishing between a line and a surface; compactness, which allows distinguishing between a line and a circle; connectedness, which allows distinguishing a circle from two non-intersecting circles.

The ideas underlying topology go back to Gottfried Leibniz, who in the 17th century envisioned the geometria situs and analysis situs. Leonhard Euler's Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem and polyhedron formula are arguably the field's first theorems. The term topology was introduced by Johann Benedict Listing in the 19th century, although it was not until the first decades of the 20th century that the idea of a topological space was developed.

💕History:

Topology, as a well-defined mathematical discipline, originates in the early part of the twentieth century, but some isolated results can be traced back several centuries. Among these are certain questions in geometry investigated by Leonhard Euler. His 1736 paper on the Seven Bridges of Königsberg is regarded as one of the first practical applications of topology. On 14 November 1750, Euler wrote to a friend that he had realised the importance of the edges of a polyhedron. This led to his polyhedron formula, V − E + F = 2 (where V, E, and F respectively indicate the number of vertices, edges, and faces of the polyhedron). Some authorities regard this analysis as the first theorem, signalling the birth of topology. Further contributions were made by Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Ludwig Schläfli, Johann Benedict Listing, Bernhard Riemann and Enrico Betti. Listing introduced the term "Topologie" in Vorstudien zur Topologie, written in his native German, in 1847, having used the word for ten years in correspondence before its first appearance in print. The English form "topology" was used in 1883 in Listing's obituary in the journal Nature to distinguish "qualitative geometry from the ordinary geometry in which quantitative relations chiefly are treated". Their work was corrected, consolidated and greatly extended by Henri Poincaré. In 1895, he published his ground-breaking paper on Analysis Situs, which introduced the concepts now known as homotopy and homology, which are now considered part of algebraic topology.

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Unifying the work on function spaces of Georg Cantor, Vito Volterra, Cesare Arzelà, Jacques Hadamard, Giulio Ascoli and others, Maurice Fréchet introduced the metric space in 1906. A metric space is now considered a special case of a general topological space, with any given topological space potentially giving rise to many distinct metric spaces. In 1914, Felix Hausdorff coined the term "topological space" and gave the definition for what is now called a Hausdorff space. Currently, a topological space is a slight generalization of Hausdorff spaces, given in 1922 by Kazimierz Kuratowski. Modern topology depends strongly on the ideas of set theory, developed by Georg Cantor in the later part of the 19th century. In addition to establishing the basic ideas of set theory, Cantor considered point sets in Euclidean space as part of his study of Fourier series. For further developments, see point-set topology and algebraic topology.

💕Motivation:

Smiley face 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. In one of the first papers in topology, Leonhard Euler demonstrated 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 or on their distance from one another, but only on connectivity properties: which bridges connect to which islands or riverbanks. This Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem led to the branch of mathematics known as graph theory.

Smiley face 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 shape of the sphere; it applies to any kind of smooth blob, as long as it has no holes. 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 cannot distinguish a coffee mug from a doughnut, since a sufficiently pliable doughnut could be reshaped to 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 are homotopy equivalent if they both result from "squishing" some larger object.

💕Topologies on sets:

Smiley face The term topology also refers to a specific mathematical idea central to the area of mathematics called topology.

Informally, a topology tells how elements of a set relate spatially to each other. The same set can have different topologies. For instance, the real line, the complex plane, and the Cantor set can be thought of as the same set with different topologies.

Formally, let X be a set and let τ be a family of subsets of X. Then τ is called a topology on X if:

Both the empty set and X are elements of τ.
Any union of elements of τ is an element of τ.
Any intersection of finitely many elements of τ is an element of τ.

Smiley face If τ is a topology on X, then the pair (X, τ) is called a topological space. The notation Xτ may be used to denote a set X endowed with the particular topology τ. By definition, every topology is a π-system. The members of τ are called open sets in X. A subset of X is said to be closed if its complement is in τ (that is, its complement is open). A subset of X may be open, closed, both (a clopen set), or neither. The empty set and X itself are always both closed and open. An open subset of X which contains a point x is called a neighborhood of x.

💕Homeomorphism:

Smiley face 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 spaces 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 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.

💕General topology:

Smiley face General topology is the branch of topology dealing with the basic set-theoretic definitions and constructions used in topology. It is the foundation of most other branches of topology, including differential topology, geometric topology, and algebraic topology. Another name for general topology is point-set topology.

The basic object of study is topological spaces, which are sets equipped with a topology, that is, a family of subsets, called open sets, which is closed under finite intersections and (finite or infinite) unions. The fundamental concepts of topology, such as continuity, compactness, and connectedness, can be defined in terms of open sets. Intuitively, continuous functions take nearby points to nearby points. Compact sets are those that can be covered by finitely many sets of arbitrarily small size. Connected sets are sets that cannot be divided into two pieces that are far apart. The words nearby, arbitrarily small, and far apart can all be made precise by using open sets. Several topologies can be defined on a given space. Changing a topology consists of changing the collection of open sets. This changes which functions are continuous and which subsets are compact or connected. Metric spaces are an important class of topological spaces where the distance between any two points is defined by a function called a metric. In a metric space, an open set is a union of open disks, where an open disk of radius r centered at x is the set of all points whose distance to x is less than r. Many common spaces are topological spaces whose topology can be defined by a metric. This is the case of the real line, the complex plane, real and complex vector spaces and Euclidean spaces. Having a metric simplifies many proofs.

💕Algebraic topology:

Smiley face Algebraic topology is a branch of mathematics that uses tools from algebra to study topological spaces. The basic goal is to find algebraic invariants that classify topological spaces up to homeomorphism, though usually most classify up to homotopy equivalence. The most important of these invariants are homotopy groups, homology, and cohomology. Although algebraic topology primarily uses algebra to study topological problems, using topology to solve algebraic problems is sometimes also possible. Algebraic topology, for example, allows for a convenient proof that any subgroup of a free group is again a free group.

💕Differential topology:

Smiley face Differential topology is the field dealing with differentiable functions on differentiable manifolds. It is closely related to differential geometry and together they make up the geometric theory of differentiable manifolds.

More specifically, differential topology considers the properties and structures that require only a smooth structure on a manifold to be defined. Smooth manifolds are "softer" than manifolds with extra geometric structures, which can act as obstructions to certain types of equivalences and deformations that exist in differential topology. For instance, volume and Riemannian curvature are invariants that can distinguish different geometric structures on the same smooth manifold—that is, one can smoothly "flatten out" certain manifolds, but it might require distorting the space and affecting the curvature or volume.

💕Geometric topology:

$Smiley face$ Geometric topology is a branch of topology that primarily focuses on low-dimensional manifolds (that is, spaces of dimensions 2, 3, and 4) and their interaction with geometry, but it also includes some higher-dimensional topology. Some examples of topics in geometric topology are orientability, handle decompositions, local flatness, crumpling and the planar and higher-dimensional Schönflies theorem.

In high-dimensional topology, characteristic classes are a basic invariant, and surgery theory is a key theory. Low-dimensional topology is strongly geometric, as reflected in the uniformization theorem in 2 dimensions – every surface admits a constant curvature metric; geometrically, it has one of 3 possible geometries: positive curvature/spherical, zero curvature/flat, and negative curvature/hyperbolic – and the geometrization conjecture (now theorem) in 3 dimensions – every 3-manifold can be cut into pieces, each of which has one of eight possible geometries. 2-dimensional topology can be studied as complex geometry in one variable (Riemann surfaces are complex curves) – by the uniformization theorem every conformal class of metrics is equivalent to a unique complex one, and 4-dimensional topology can be studied from the point of view of complex geometry in two variables (complex surfaces), though not every 4-manifold admits a complex structure.

💕Topology & Biology:

Smiley face Knot theory, a branch of topology, is used in biology to study the effects of certain enzymes on DNA.

These enzymes cut, twist, and reconnect the DNA, causing knotting with observable effects such as slower electrophoresis. Topology is also used in evolutionary biology to represent the relationship between phenotype and genotype. Phenotypic forms that appear quite different can be separated by only a few mutations depending on how genetic changes map to phenotypic changes during development. In neuroscience, topological quantities like the Euler characteristic and Betti number have been used to measure the complexity of patterns of activity in neural networks.

💕Topology & Computer Science:

Smiley face Topological data analysis uses techniques from algebraic topology to determine the large scale structure of a set (for instance, determining if a cloud of points is spherical or toroidal).

The main method used by topological data analysis is to:

Replace a set of data points with a family of simplicial complexes, indexed by a proximity parameter.
Analyse these topological complexes via algebraic topology – specifically, via the theory of persistent homology.
Encode the persistent homology of a data set in the form of a parameterized version of a Betti number, which is called a barcode.

Several branches of programming language semantics, such as domain theory, are formalized using topology. In this context, Steve Vickers, building on work by Samson Abramsky and Michael B. Smyth, characterizes topological spaces as Boolean or Heyting algebras over open sets, which are characterized as semidecidable (equivalently, finitely observable) properties.

💕Topology & Physics:

Smiley face Topology is relevant to physics in areas such as condensed matter physics, quantum field theory and physical cosmology.

The topological dependence of mechanical properties in solids is of interest in disciplines of mechanical engineering and materials science. Electrical and mechanical properties depend on the arrangement and network structures of molecules and elementary units in materials. The compressive strength of crumpled topologies is studied in attempts to understand the high strength to weight of such structures that are mostly empty space. Topology is of further significance in Contact mechanics where the dependence of stiffness and friction on the dimensionality of surface structures is the subject of interest with applications in multi-body physics. A topological quantum field theory (or topological field theory or TQFT) is a quantum field theory that computes topological invariants. Although TQFTs were invented by physicists, they are also of mathematical interest, being related to, among other things, knot theory, the theory of four-manifolds in algebraic topology, and to the theory of moduli spaces in algebraic geometry. Donaldson, Jones, Witten, and Kontsevich have all won Fields Medals for work related to topological field theory. The topological classification of Calabi-Yau manifolds has important implications in string theory, as different manifolds can sustain different kinds of strings. In cosmology, topology can be used to describe the overall shape of the universe. This area of research is commonly known as spacetime topology.

💕Topology & Robotics:

Smiley face The possible positions of a robot can be described by a manifold called configuration space. In the area of motion planning, one finds paths between two points in configuration space. These paths represent a motion of the robot's joints and other parts into the desired pose.

💕Topology in Games and puzzles:

Smiley face Tanglement puzzles are based on topological aspects of the puzzle's shapes and components.
Disentanglement puzzles (also called entanglement puzzles, tanglement puzzles, tavern puzzles or topological puzzles) are a type or group of mechanical puzzle that involves disentangling one piece or set of pieces from another piece or set of pieces. Several subtypes are included under this category, the names of which are sometimes used synonymously for the group: wire puzzles; nail puzzles; ring-and-string puzzles; et al. Although the initial object is disentanglement, the reverse problem of reassembling the puzzle can be as hard as—or even harder than—disentanglement. There are several different kinds of disentanglement puzzles, though a single puzzle may incorporate several of these features.

💕Topology in Fiber art:

Smiley face In graph theory, an Eulerian trail (or Eulerian path) is a trail in a finite graph that visits every edge exactly once (allowing for revisiting vertices).

Similarly, an Eulerian circuit or Eulerian cycle is an Eulerian trail that starts and ends on the same vertex. They were first discussed by Leonhard Euler while solving the famous Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem in 1736. The problem can be stated mathematically like this:

Given the graph in the image, is it possible to construct a path (or a cycle; i.e., a path starting and ending on the same vertex) that visits each edge exactly once?

Euler proved that a necessary condition for the existence of Eulerian circuits is that all vertices in the graph have an even degree, and stated without proof that connected graphs with all vertices of even degree have an Eulerian circuit. The first complete proof of this latter claim was published posthumously in 1873 by Carl Hierholzer. This is known as Euler's Theorem:

A connected graph has an Euler cycle if and only if every vertex has even degree.

The term Eulerian graph has two common meanings in graph theory. One meaning is a graph with an Eulerian circuit, and the other is a graph with every vertex of even degree. These definitions coincide for connected graphs. For the existence of Eulerian trails it is necessary that zero or two vertices have an odd degree; this means the Königsberg graph is not Eulerian. If there are no vertices of odd degree, all Eulerian trails are circuits. If there are exactly two vertices of odd degree, all Eulerian trails start at one of them and end at the other. A graph that has an Eulerian trail but not an Eulerian circuit is called semi-Eulerian.

💕 topology-FACTOMANIA:

Smiley face Why topology is interesting is a little like asking why algebra is interesting. It is an absolutely enormous field, with many, many different applications of various flavors. It is almost impossible not to find something that you find interesting.

Here are some fascinating facts about Topology:

Point-set topology: The basic definitions of a topological space, continuous function, compact space, connected space, etc. might seem crazily abstract, and I suppose that is true. A consequence of that generality is that general topological spaces are weird. They have properties that you do not expect. Something like the Klein bottle (which lacks a clearly defined inside and outside) is relatively tame in topology. There are more odd examples like the long line (which is just like the normal real line, but... longer. Much longer.) and the Topologist's sine curve. You might be tempted to say that this plethora of bizarre examples is indicative that the definitions are too abstract and general. But the truth is that the generality means that topology can be applied in many different, seemingly impossible places. One of my favorite examples of this is given in Furstenberg's proof that there are infinitely many primes, which makes use of a bizarre topology on the integers. I've written about this here: What are some proofs of the infinitude of primes?
Zariski topology: If you are interested in polynomial equations and particularly algebraic geometry, then you have to learn about Zariski topology, which defines what are open and closed sets based on what sort of sets are zero sets of polynomials. I don't have too much to say about this, other than that this is also an odd topology---generally, it isn't even Hausdorff.
Algebraic topology: One way to study topology is to study how do loops and closed surfaces and other higher dimensional analogues behave in your space. For example, given a loop, can you always shrink it down to a point? You can do this on a plane, for example, but if you cut a hole in the plane, it suddenly becomes impossible, because you can loop around the hole. It turns out that, fundamentally, studying loops, etc. is really the same thing as associating algebraic objects (most basically, groups, but depending on the specifics, it might be rings) to your space. So, by studying algebra, you learn about topology, and by studying topology, you can learn about algebra. This is really apparent in the study of homology and cohomology, which started out as very concrete fields inside of algebraic topology, and then morphed into almost impossibly general algebraic constructions in category theory. It is kind of amazing. Even if you don't appreciate the mathematical power of it, you should admire the pretty drawings of covering spaces that come up in the process. (Google is actually pretty underwhelming in this regard, but Hatcher has some nice drawings in his book---which is free to download, by the way.)
deRham cohomology: One last example, which is really a subset of the previous one, but which I like quite a bit. This is a particular take on cohomology (roughly speaking, studying the topological character of a space by associating groups/rings to it in a particular way) which uses the notion of integration. The idea is that if you tell me how things integrate on a space, then really this is the same thing as telling me what the space of this space is (roughly speaking). I think that this is surprising, and rather nice.

SOLOpedia Topology