The Whitney immersion theorem asserts that every smooth n-dimensional manifold can be immersed in R2n-1, in particular, smooth surfaces can be immersed in R3, and for embeddings the ambient dimension needs to go up by...The Whitney immersion theorem asserts that every smooth n-dimensional manifold can be immersed in R2n-1, in particular, smooth surfaces can be immersed in R3, and for embeddings the ambient dimension needs to go up by 1. Immersions or embeddings carry both intrinsic and extrinsic information of manifolds, and the latter determines how the manifold fits into the Euclidean space. The key geometric quantity to capture the extrinsic geometry is the second fundamental form.展开更多
文摘The Whitney immersion theorem asserts that every smooth n-dimensional manifold can be immersed in R2n-1, in particular, smooth surfaces can be immersed in R3, and for embeddings the ambient dimension needs to go up by 1. Immersions or embeddings carry both intrinsic and extrinsic information of manifolds, and the latter determines how the manifold fits into the Euclidean space. The key geometric quantity to capture the extrinsic geometry is the second fundamental form.