The level equation is . In particular , so the global affine coordinates on this level are . They identify it with
The diagonal circle action becomes and is free: at least one coordinate is nonzero, so fixing a point forces . Since the circle is compact, the Free proper Lie-group action theorem makes the quotient a smooth two-dimensional smooth manifold.
The map is the Hopf fibration. It is onto the complex projective line, and two unit representatives determine the same complex line precisely when they differ by a scalar of modulus one, hence by a circle orbit. Local sections, for example , show that the induced identification is a diffeomorphism. Therefore
This identifies the symplectic reduction as a smooth manifold; no computation of its reduced symplectic form is needed.
Write the closed oriented surface of genus as , where is a closed disk, is a slightly enlarged once-punctured surface, and is an annulus. Thus is contractible, is homotopy equivalent to the circle, and is homotopy equivalent to the wedge sum of circles. The boundary circle represents the product of the commutators in the fundamental group of , so its image in the first homology group, which is the abelianization of that group, is zero.
The relevant part of the Mayer–Vietoris sequence is consequently
The degree-zero part says that the connected space has , while the groups above degree two vanish. Hence
Now , so every mass is again at rest after the pulse and . Put . The final transverse coordinates are
The unit vectors along and are eigenvectors with eigenvalues and , respectively. Consequently an initial circle becomes, to first order, an ellipse compressed along the line and stretched along . This persistent deformation is displacement memory.
The unitization of is on the one-point compactification of . The supplied homeomorphism identifies with the circle . Every character of extends to the unital character
By part d, is evaluation at a point of . Evaluation at the point at infinity vanishes on and cannot restrict to the nonzero character . The point is therefore some , and . Conversely each is plainly a character, so
Polarization (waves) 2026-10-13
Polarization of waves describes the direction and time-dependent geometry of a transverse wave's vector during its oscillation at a fixed position. In three spatial dimensions, a transverse wave can have two independent directions of oscillation, both perpendicular to its direction of propagation. For polarization of an electromagnetic wave, the relevant vector is the transverse electric field; for a mechanical transverse wave, it can be the transverse displacement. A purely longitudinal wave has no choice between these transverse directions, and the orientation of a static electric field is not polarization of waves.
Choose transverse axes in a Cartesian coordinate system. A monochromatic wave with a fixed phase difference has the real electric field
Here are wave amplitudes, is the angular frequency, and is the phase difference of the oscillation relative to the oscillation. The vector's tip traces its path during the wave period . Both plotted coordinates are real electric field components; neither axis represents the imaginary part of a complex amplitude.
For nonzero wave amplitudes, or modulo gives linear polarization: the vector moves back and forth along a fixed line. Equal nonzero wave amplitudes and modulo give circular polarization: the tip traces a circle of constant radius. Unequal nonzero wave amplitudes with give a noncircular ellipse whose axes coincide with . More generally, nonzero wave amplitudes and give elliptical polarization, with circular polarization as a special case. If exactly one wave amplitude vanishes, the nonzero wave has linear polarization for every ; if both vanish, there is no nonzero wave to assign a polarization of waves. [ref].
For example, take , so the wave period is . The choices , and , with electric field wave amplitudes in , produce respectively the line segment , the circle and the ellipse , when coordinates are measured in . At , their tips are respectively , and . The last two share a point without having the same path.
Figure 1. . All panels use the same coordinate scale. Orange arrows follow increasing wave phase ; the dot marks . The blue vector is the electric field at . These are paths at one fixed position, rather than spatial drawings of a propagating wave. Details.
Resolving the electric field into two transverse components makes polarization of waves useful: the same frequency and wave amplitudes can describe different paths when their phase difference changes. An ideal linear polarizer selects the component along its pass axis, letting its orientation probe the direction of linear polarization through Malus's law. A fixed pair of wave amplitudes and a fixed phase difference describe one stable path; unpolarized light requires a statistical description rather than one fixed ellipse.
For a polynomial with , no polynomial root at zero, and different from every , Jensen's formula gives the displayed expression. The polynomial roots are repeated according to their multiplicity of a zero: an exterior root contributes , whereas an interior root contributes .
For an explicit example, take the polynomial
Its two simple zeros are and . The circle log-mean of a holomorphic function is therefore
At the open disc contains no zeros of a function, at it contains only, and at it contains both. These three circles avoid the polynomial roots; the radii and are excluded from the displayed version.
Figure 1.
The zeros of inside three concentric disks
. The three boundary circles enclose respectively zero, one and two simple zeros. Each zero contributes to Jensen's formula only after the radius exceeds its complex modulus. Details.
The corresponding values of the circle log-mean of a holomorphic function and the circle geometric mean of a holomorphic function are
For example, at the contribution of the sole interior zero of a function is ; adding it to gives . The second polynomial root still affects , but contributes no additional interior-zero term at this radius.
Figure 2.
Circle log-mean versus log-radius for
. The log-radius slope of the circle log-mean is zero, one and two in the three intervals, matching the radial zero-counting function. Open markers exclude the boundary-zero radii and ; filled markers show the three computed examples. Details.
For a simple closed curve in the standard oriented complex plane, positive orientation keeps the bounded interior on the left while traversing the curve. A circle is therefore traversed counterclockwise; reversing direction changes the sign of its contour integral.
Power law Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-13
A power law is a relation , with fixed constants and . For positive , any real number is allowed. Its useful feature is a simple scaling rule:
The same proportional change of input produces the same proportional change of output, independently of the starting value. The exponent controls that response; the coefficient fixes the magnitude.
For example, the area of a circle is . Doubling the radius multiplies its area by four, and tripling it multiplies the area by nine. The volume of a sphere is : the same changes multiply its volume by eight and twenty-seven. The distinction explains why similarly shaped objects do not preserve their ratio of surface area to volume when their size changes.
When the output is positive, a logarithm turns the power law into a straight-line relation. Using positive reference values and ,
These ratios are dimensionless quantities, so the formula also applies to physical measurements with units. Plotting both ratios on a logarithmic scale gives a line of slope . Changing a unit changes the numerical coefficient, while the exponent stays the same. Positive describes increasing values; negative describes decreasing values; gives a constant. The zero coefficient is a degenerate case with no useful logarithmic slope.
Exact scaling is stronger than regular variation. The function has a doubling ratio tending to four, but its logarithmic correction keeps growing. The diagram contrasts it with the exact power law .
Figure 1.
Exact quadratic scaling and a logarithmic correction have different finite doubling ratios, even though the correction leaves the limiting exponent unchanged
. Details.
A power law for a probability density and a power law for a tail probability have different exponents. For a Pareto distribution with and lower endpoint one,
The tail probability has exponent ; differentiating it and changing sign gives the probability density exponent . Confusing them changes the interpretation of a fitted exponent. The normalizing coefficient and lower endpoint also matter: a decreasing power law is not automatically a valid probability density over the entire positive real line.
The appearance of a line over a finite logarithmic range is evidence to investigate, rather than a proof of an exact power law or its mechanism. In their study of power-law distributions, Clauset, Shalizi and Newman combine maximum likelihood estimation, goodness-of-fit tests and comparisons with alternative models; their abstract explains why ordinary least-squares fitting can give misleading results for tail data. See Aaron Clauset, Cosma Rohilla Shalizi and M. E. J. Newman, Power-law distributions in empirical data, SIAM Review 51 (2009), 661–703. The scaling rule is mathematically exact when it defines a model; whether a dataset supports that model is a question of statistical inference.
Prime-ball exchange lemma 2026-10-14
In a complete decomposing sphere system for a knot, a disk inside a prime-factor ball that meets the knotted arc once cuts its factor into a connected sum of knots. One side must be an unknot. Replacing the ball by the side carrying the prime factor therefore preserves the unordered factor list. A disk missing the arc cuts off an empty ball and gives the same conclusion. After a small transverse perturbation, such a replacement removes an innermost intersection circle with another sphere system. If a chosen innermost disk contains both marked points, another innermost disk, or its complementary disk when it is the only intersection, contains neither. Iterating produces a prime-factor ball disjoint from both systems. The replacement changes only the location of a joining arc in the intervening punctured ball; capping the other boundaries still recovers the same oriented factors.
Every nontrivial oriented knot is a finite connected sum of knots of prime knots, uniquely up to permutation and oriented link isotopy. Existence follows by induction from additivity of Seifert genus. For uniqueness, compare complete decomposing sphere systems for a knot and remove their intersection circles by the prime-ball exchange lemma. Once a prime ball is disjoint from both systems, its factor can be removed from both; induction then matches all factors.
Quotient topological space Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
A quotient topological space is a quotient set equipped with the quotient topology. For a concrete gluing, give the closed interval its usual subspace topology, identify , and leave every interior point in its own singleton equivalence class. The resulting quotient space is a circle: the two endpoints become one point, while interior points remain distinct.
Figure 1.
Gluing the interval endpoints produces a circle, with matching colors showing the projection
. Details.
The exact continuous map to the unit circle in the plane is
Here sine and cosine give , and holds exactly when or . Thus induces a bijection . [ref] The universal property of the quotient topology makes continuous. The quotient of a compact space is compact, and the unit circle is Hausdorff, so the compact-to-Hausdorff continuous bijection theorem makes a homeomorphism. This verifies the topology, not merely the point identifications.
To inspect an open neighbourhood of the seam, choose and let . Its full preimage is
Both pieces are open in the subspace topology on , so is open in the circle. In contrast, is open in , but
is not open in : it contains without any neighbourhood of . Hence is not open in the circle. A quotient map can therefore fail to be an open map.
Figure 2.
An open neighbourhood crosses both sides of the glued seam; a one-sided arc fails the full-preimage test
. Details.
For a continuous function , the only gluing condition is . For example, defines a continuous function on the circle, whereas does not. This lets us use an interval as a coordinate for a periodic function while making the seam invisible. More general quotient spaces encode glued geometric pieces in the same way: describe continuous maps before gluing and check that their values agree on every equivalence class.
The Hausdorff property need not survive a quotient topology. In the non-Hausdorff quotient of the real line by rational translation, means . A nonempty open preimage must contain all translates by rational numbers of any open interval inside it. The density of the rational numbers then forces : for any , some rational number has in that interval. Thus this quotient space has the indiscrete topology. The irrationality of the square root of two gives distinct equivalence classes for and , so this quotient space is not Hausdorff. Unlike the endpoint-gluing circle, this gluing identifies a dense subset with each point.
Radian Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-10-14
An angle in radians is the ratio of its subtended arc length to the radius of a circle. A full turn is radians and a right angle is radians.