A strange curiosity: Given a smooth family of smooth embedded curves $C_t \subset \Bbb R^3$, can you choose a smooth family of smooth embedded minimal surfaces $D_t \subset \Bbb R^3$ bounding $C_t$?
@TedShifrin I was curious because it is not too hard to write a discontinuous family of smooth embedded minimal surfaces $D_t$ bounding a smooth family of smooth embedded minimal curves. (Think of, I guess, a pair of coaxial circles -- if they're too far you fill each by a planar disk, if they're too close you fill by a catenoid)
But all these examples seem to involve passing through a time $t = t_0$ where the curve has some extra symmetries making it bound two distinct minimal surfaces, and for $t < t_0$ and $t > t_0$ patching the "two different branches" of families of surfaces.
Yeah, Balarka, I was thinking about my exercise with two minimal (not both area-minimizing) catenoids with certain boundary circles. And as you vary the boundary circles continuous, there is some interesting behavior.
So the Taylor polynomial of the denominator starts with an $x^2$. That means you MUST use a Taylor polynomial of degree/order $2$ or more for the numerator.
He was the advisor of a very good friend of mine. It sounds like he was a slightly abusive advisor, but also a very dear friend and mentor at the end of the day.
OK, @Alessandro, the answer is that the limit does not exist but you need to understand that you cannot just do polynomials of whatever degree you want. If the numerator is $2x + o(x)$, then $\dfrac{2x+o(x)}{x^2+o(x^2)} = \dfrac{\frac 2x+ \frac{o(x)}{x^2}}{1+\frac{o(x^2)}{x^2}}$, and this limit becomes $\lim\dfrac{\frac2x}{1}$, which does not exist.
In complex analysis, the argument principle (or Cauchy's argument principle) is a theorem relating the difference between the number of zeros and poles of a meromorphic function to a contour integral of the function's logarithmic derivative.
== Formulation ==
If f(z) is a meromorphic function inside and on some closed contour C, and f has no zeros or poles on C, then
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@Jakobian The argument principle is about the zeros and poles of a meromorphic function. It is usually taught in a first course on complex anal. The Mellin transform is likely a little more mysterious to most working mathematicians, but show shows up in physics and engineering a lot. It is also useful in complex anal, and shows up in the analysis of uh... Dirichlet series (is that the term I want?).
That was one of my favorite topics in teaching differential topology to prove the Hopf Degree Theorem (awesome theorem, Jakobian: two maps $M\to S^n$ — $M$ compact, oriented $n$-manifold — are homotopic iff they have the same degree).
Oh, and I should say (since I discussed this in a post on main recently) @Jakobian, that that holds for continuous maps, not just smooth maps.
The proof of Hopf uses the generalization. You can excise little balls around the preimage points of a regular value and get that the global degree is the sum of local degrees.
You need to argue that if the net degree is $0$, for example, then you can cancel things out in pairs.
@TedShifrin It's a bit cheeky, but here goes: Let $K(\Bbb Z, n)$ denote Eilenberg-MacLane space. One may check $X \mapsto [X, K(\Bbb Z, n)]$ is an assignment which satisfies all the axioms of an ordinary cohomology theory. Therefore, there must be a natural isomorphism $[X, K(\Bbb Z, n)] \to H^n(X; \Bbb Z)$ as there is only one ordinary cohomology theory upto isomorphism (Eilenberg-Steenrod). What Yoneda does for you in these situations is tell you what the isomorphism explicitly is.
I think the fact that there are unstable and non-minimizing minimal surfaces makes these things hard/subtle, but the experts certainly know the answer to your question.
Crofton shows up all over in various guises. Griffiths's paper (with a serious error) on Milnor numbers and singularities was based on versions of Crofton ... and led to my Ph.D. thesis, too.
This geometric topology stuff is all stuff I know zero about.
But at least I know how to prove Gauss Bonnet by seeing that the Euler class is Poincaré dual to a particularly important Schubert cycle in the oriented Grassmannian :D
That was a proof I never found written down anywhere.
I am not nearly as skilled in it, but I am teaching a bunch of people about pseudoholomorphic curves and almost all computations I do in moving frames.
It is a nightmare to prove Weitzenbock formula without moving frames, say.
I came across a meme clip a while ago where a guy was doing index computations and ran out of boardspace so he started saying it out loud and it went "mew new mew mew plus new mew new ..."
@TedShifrin I see. Are they possibly more into General Relativistic stuff? I don't expect people who deal with gauge theory to hate differential forms, for example
@SineoftheTime but I should first see if it can be used
I know that i need to set the limit of a_n which tends to +infinity and which must be equal to 0. Then I have to verify that the sequence a_n decreases
@AlessandroTerminiello $\log(1+\sin (\sqrt{n+1}-\sqrt n))=\log(1+\sin(\frac1{\sqrt{n+1}+\sqrt n}))\sim \log (1+\frac1{\sqrt{n+1}+\sqrt n}) \sim \frac1{\sqrt{n+1}+\sqrt n}\sim \frac1{2\sqrt n}$. Hence your original series is asymptotically equivalent to $\sum \frac {(-1)^n}{2\sqrt n}$
But to be honest I got used to work with indices too, although I don't plan to keep doing it forever. The problem is when it's difficult to translate something that only seems a notation game into real differential geometry
The thing I'm having most trouble with in GR are lightlike hypersurfaces (i.e. hypersurfaces on which the restriction of the metric tensor is zero). Do you happen to know any differential geometry book discussing those?
Being "generated" by geodesic, introducing a notion of integration via a "transverse" metric are all things that I don't find to be compelling reading GR books
alessandro, the key is that the log thing [eventually] has constant sign. it isn't so important whether it's [eventually] positive or [eventually] negative, because a sign difference like that would not affect convergence or the application of the test.
it sounds like you're working through someone else's solution? it might help to ask that person. they would maybe be more familiar with what you have and haven't seen, or are "allowed to use"
the key is that the log thing [eventually] has constant sign. it isn't so important whether it's [eventually] positive or [eventually] negative, because a sign difference like that would not affect convergence or the application of the test.
what this mean
@leslietownes
@SineoftheTime the series converges by asymptotic comparison
it sounds like you were working through a solution where someone is checking the hypotheses of a theorem about series of the form (-1)^n b_n or (-1)^{n+1} b_n. checking that the sequence b_n has eventually constant sign would be part of applying this kind of theorem.
if you don't know at all why someone would be worried about whether b_n would be positive in analyzing a series of the form sum (-1)^n b_n, i suggest asking whoever presented what you describe as " the step of seeing if the log is > 0" why that is worth doing or necessary
it sounds like this "step" was not your idea
i'm hesitant to suggest more detail because i don't know what techniques you are or are not familiar with
there are really two questions, is the series convergent (it seems like the answer is yes), and how can we see that the series is convergent using tests that are known to you. the second part is trickier than the first
the reason books have hypothesis like "b_n > 0" in theorems about sum (-1)^n b_n is that if the sequence b_n does not have constant sign, you may have no control over what the sign of (-1)^n b_n is, and in particular, sum (-1)^n b_n might not be an "alternating series"
for a theorem like that, it isn't so important that b_n be always positive, or even eventually positive. it is important that b_n eventually not change sign
so that (-1)^n b_n is something that alternates in sign
that theorem likely has other hypotheses that might be difficult to verify in this case. a standard way of showing that a sequence b_n of positive numbers is eventually decreasing is to find a function of a real variable f(x) with b_n = f(n) and to use calculus to show that the sign of f'(x) is eventually negative
i would start on an easier example of a problem of this type before doing this one
@Mr.Feynman That's more mathematicians than physicists. My impression is that the truly mathematical theoretical physicists form a very small percentage of physicists.
If $G$ is a compact Lie group with biinvariant metric $g$ and $H$ is a closed subgroup, then $H$ is an embedded submanifold of $G$ and so $i^{*}g$ restricted to $H$ is bi-invariant too. Now my question is, and this might be stupid, if $d_{g}$ is the induced Riemannian distance on $G$ does $d_{g}$ and $d_{i^*g}$ coincide on $H$?
@leslie Interesting point. If $a_n = b_n + O(1/n^2)$ and $b_n>0$ decreases, then Leibniz should work for $\sum (-1)^n a_n$. But I do not recall discussing this in a class.
ted: yes, one thing we are running into here is that none of those "alternating series test" theorems are "if and only if" and even when such a test does apply, it might not be the simplest approach. so, maybe a gap between what the chat might come up with and what a student is supposed to do using a textbook theorem as a black box
@Ted: Silly question, suppose $f : \Bbb H^2 \to \Bbb H^3$ is an isometric embedding in the Riemannian sense (pullback of induced Riemannian metric in the codomain under embedding agrees with the Riemannian metric in the domain). Does that mean image of $f$ is necessarily totally geodesic?
This is not true for $S^2$ in $\Bbb R^3$, certainly.
i have not seen a textbook exercise introduce the idea of applying an alternating series test to only 'part' of a convergent series, even if that's easier than analyzing the behavior of the 'full' series
$$\sum_{{n=2}}^{\infty} a^n \tan\left(\frac{\sqrt{n^2+n} - \sqrt{n^2+1}}{3^n+n^3}\right) \sim \frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{a}{3}\right)^n$$ , i need to use D'Alembert criterion right?
ted: related to that, the business of not minding the lower index of summation when spamming out a list of textbook exercises about sum n = "1" to infinity of 1/(n(n-5)), or 1/ln(ln(ln(n))), or whatever
Ah right ofcourse. Going back to my original question, out of curiosity, what if $H$ is also simple and compact, then since bii-invariants metrics on simple compact Lie groups are unique up to scalar then does that mean that $d_{i^*g}=ad_g$ for some scalar a?
$$\sum_{{n=2}}^{\infty} a^n \tan\left(\frac{\sqrt{n^2+n} - \sqrt{n^2+1}}{3^n+n^3}\right) \sim \frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{a}{3}\right)^n$$ , i need to use D'Alembert criterion right?
The basic idea goes back to the very beginning of AT but it was not explored much. People wanted to think about cohomology groups (and other algebraic invariants) as topological groups, but this is kind of terrible because coboundaries are almost never closed in the cocyles, so the topology on the quotient is all messed up
So the solution turns out to be to think about those invariants as "groups with a Polish covers" that is groups explicitely presented as the quotient of a Polish group (the cover, cocyles for example) by a Polishable subgroup (coboundaries) and to say that a morphism between Polishable subgroups is a definable morphism, in the sense that it lifts to a Borel map between their covers
The category of abelian groups with a Polish cover turns out to be the canonical completion to an Abelian category of the category of Polish abelian groups (whatever that means) so they are apparently great objects to work with
And they give somewhat finer invariants than just the cohomology groups as discrete groups
I think it was the following: define a "tree 2-complex" to be a cell complex which is locally homeomorphic to either R^2, (R^2 with a half-plane glued by its edge along the x-axis) or (R^2 with a half-plane glued by its edge along the x-axis, and a half plane glued by its edge along the y-axis (Rmk. these glued half-planes do not intersect in the interior)).
Can one define a "2-dimensional dendrite" as an appropriate inverse limit of "tree 2-complexes"?
This was motivated by a comment you made which I think shows this is indeed true in dimension 1.