Cone (topology)

Summary

In topology, especially algebraic topology, the cone of a topological space is intuitively obtained by stretching X into a cylinder and then collapsing one of its end faces to a point. The cone of X is denoted by or by .

Cone of a circle. The original space X is in blue, and the collapsed end point v is in green.

Definitions

edit

Formally, the cone of X is defined as:

 

where   is a point (called the vertex of the cone) and   is the projection to that point. In other words, it is the result of attaching the cylinder   by its face   to a point   along the projection  .

If   is a non-empty compact subspace of Euclidean space, the cone on   is homeomorphic to the union of segments from   to any fixed point   such that these segments intersect only in   itself. That is, the topological cone agrees with the geometric cone for compact spaces when the latter is defined. However, the topological cone construction is more general.

The cone is a special case of a join:   the join of   with a single point  .[1]: 76 

Examples

edit

Here we often use a geometric cone (  where   is a non-empty compact subspace of Euclidean space). The considered spaces are compact, so we get the same result up to homeomorphism.

  • The cone over a point p of the real line is a line-segment in  ,  .
  • The cone over two points {0, 1} is a "V" shape with endpoints at {0} and {1}.
  • The cone over a closed interval I of the real line is a filled-in triangle (with one of the edges being I), otherwise known as a 2-simplex (see the final example).
  • The cone over a polygon P is a pyramid with base P.
  • The cone over a disk is the solid cone of classical geometry (hence the concept's name).
  • The cone over a circle given by
 
is the curved surface of the solid cone:
 
This in turn is homeomorphic to the closed disc.

More general examples:[1]: 77, Exercise.1 

  • The cone over an n-sphere is homeomorphic to the closed (n + 1)-ball.
  • The cone over an n-ball is also homeomorphic to the closed (n + 1)-ball.
  • The cone over an n-simplex is an (n + 1)-simplex.

Properties

edit

All cones are path-connected since every point can be connected to the vertex point. Furthermore, every cone is contractible to the vertex point by the homotopy

 .

The cone is used in algebraic topology precisely because it embeds a space as a subspace of a contractible space.

When X is compact and Hausdorff (essentially, when X can be embedded in Euclidean space), then the cone   can be visualized as the collection of lines joining every point of X to a single point. However, this picture fails when X is not compact or not Hausdorff, as generally the quotient topology on   will be finer than the set of lines joining X to a point.

Cone functor

edit

The map   induces a functor   on the category of topological spaces Top. If   is a continuous map, then   is defined by

 ,

where square brackets denote equivalence classes.

Reduced cone

edit

If   is a pointed space, there is a related construction, the reduced cone, given by

 

where we take the basepoint of the reduced cone to be the equivalence class of  . With this definition, the natural inclusion   becomes a based map. This construction also gives a functor, from the category of pointed spaces to itself.

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ a b Matoušek, Jiří (2007). Using the Borsuk-Ulam Theorem: Lectures on Topological Methods in Combinatorics and Geometry (2nd ed.). Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-540-00362-5. Written in cooperation with Anders Björner and Günter M. Ziegler , Section 4.3
  • Allen Hatcher, Algebraic topology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. xii+544 pp. ISBN 0-521-79160-X and ISBN 0-521-79540-0
  • "Cone". PlanetMath.