Differential Topology

Front Cover
American Mathematical Soc., 2010 - Mathematics - 222 pages

Differential Topology provides an elementary and intuitive introduction to the study of smooth manifolds. In the years since its first publication, Guillemin and Pollack's book has become a standard text on the subject. It is a jewel of mathematical exposition, judiciously picking exactly the right mixture of detail and generality to display the richness within.

The text is mostly self-contained, requiring only undergraduate analysis and linear algebra. By relying on a unifying idea--transversality--the authors are able to avoid the use of big machinery or ad hoc techniques to establish the main results. In this way, they present intelligent treatments of important theorems, such as the Lefschetz fixed-point theorem, the Poincaré-Hopf index theorem, and Stokes theorem.

The book has a wealth of exercises of various types. Some are routine explorations of the main material. In others, the students are guided step-by-step through proofs of fundamental results, such as the Jordan-Brouwer separation theorem. An exercise section in Chapter 4 leads the student through a construction of de Rham cohomology and a proof of its homotopy invariance.

The book is suitable for either an introductory graduate course or an advanced undergraduate course.

 

Contents

CHAPTER
2
Transversality and Intersection
57
2 ONEMANIFOLDS AND SOME CONSEQUENCES
64
3 TRANSVERSALITY
67
4 INTERSECTION THEORY MOD 2
77
5 WINDING NUMBERS AND THE JORDANBROUWER SEPARATION THEOREM
85
6 THE BORSUKULAM THEOREM
91
CHAPTER 3
94
7 THE EULER CHARACTERISTIC AND TRIANGULATIONS
148
CHAPTER 4
151
2 EXTERIOR ALGEBRA
153
3 DIFFERENTIAL FORMS
162
4 INTEGRATION ON MANIFOLDS
165
5 EXTERIOR DERIVATIVE
174
6 COHOMOLOGY WITH FORMS
178
7 STOKES THEOREM
182

2 ORIENTATION
95
3 ORIENTED INTERSECTION NUMBER
107
4 LEFSCHETZ FIXEDPOINT THEORY
119
5 VECTOR FIELDS AND THE POINCAREHOPF THEOREM
132
6 THE HOPF DEGREE THEOREM
141
8 INTEGRATION AND MAPPINGS
188
9 THE GAUSSBONNET THEOREM
194
APPENDIX 2
208
Index
217
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