Manifolds, Charts, Atlases, Coordinates

Notes for GR-I - CCD

Take Rn to be the set of all n-tuples of real numbers, that is the set of all (x1 , x2 , . . . , xn ) where xi R for i = 1, . . . , n. Let M be a set of points. M is a manifold if for every point of M there is an open neighbourhood of that point for which there is a continuous one-to-one onto map f to an open neighbourhood of Rn for some integer n. Thus f is a bijection and if f and its inverse, f 1 , are continuous on the neighbourhood, f is a homeomorphism. With these conditions satised, the local region of M can be made look very much like R locally. The dimension of M is n, the dimension of Rn , and like Rn , we will take M to be Hausdor, or equivalently, any two distinct points of M can be separated by neighbourhoods. At this point, neither M nor Rn has been given metric properties, so geometric quantities like distances or angles have not yet been dened in either.
n

Coordinates and Coordinate Transformations

Consider two regions of M , say U and V , and the corresponding maps from U and V to regions of Rn . That is: f : U Rn and g : V Rn (1)

Take f (U ) to be the image of U in Rn and g (V ) to be the image of V in Rn . We will take U and V to have a non-empty intersection U V , and consider in particular the two mappings as they act on this intersection of U and V . Choose some point, A, in f (U V ) Rn , and take the coordinates in that Rn to be (x1 , x2 , . . . , xn ). We now use the inverse mapping, f 1 to map A back to U in M , and in fact back to the point B in U V . Since B lies in the intersection, we can now use the map g to map B to a point C in the region g (U V ) of Rn , where we take the coordinates to be (y 1 , y 2 , . . . , y n ). Given the properties of both f and g , it follows that we have a one-to-one mapping, g f 1 , from the region f (U V ) of an Rn to another region g (U V ) of an Rn . In this process, we have dened the coordinate transformation: y 1 = y 1 (x1 , x2 , . . . , xn )

...

y n = y n (x1 , x2 , . . . , xn )

(2)

c Charles C. Dyer

taking us from one particular coordinate system for the region U V to another. We note that the net eect of the coordinate transformation is between the two copies of Rn , and does not involve any active transformation in the manifold M itself. Thus any properties that are intrinsic to the manifold M or structure that is added to this manifold at each point will remain invariant under changes of coordinate systems, since the particular points in M remain unchanged.

Rn M f f(U) f
1

U
B U V

A f (U V ) (x1 , ..., xn )

Rn C g (U V )

g (y 1 , ..., y n )

g(V)

Figure 1: Maps and coordinates

An Atlas of Charts
A chart is a map of some neighbourhood of M to Rn . In the gure above, both f and g are charts from regions of M to Rn . In the case considered, these two charts act on intersecting regions of M , that is U V , and give two dierent coordinate systems for this intersection. Two charts are said to be C k -related when the resulting coordinate systems are such that their mutual k th partial derivatives exist and are continuous. Suppose that a set of charts for M exists such that every point of M is in at least one chart neighbourhood. Such a set of charts covering all of M is called an atlas for M . If all intersecting charts for M from that atlas are at least C k -related, then M is called a C k manifold. Further, M is called a dierentiable manifold if it is a C k manifold with k 1. 2

Consider two intersecting charts of M , with coordinates xa and y a , and dene the determinant of the Jacobian matrix of the coordinate transformation to be J = det y a xb (3)

If J does not change sign at all on M , then M is an orientable manifold. If J = 0 in the neighbourhood of any point of M , then there will be a one-to-one inverse coordinate transformation in that neighbourhood. In general we considerable only orientable manifolds, but a simple example of a non-orientable manifold is the M obius strip.