For , apply the area formula to the velocity map and bound the initial data by their velocity essential supremum. This gives the displayed mixed Lebesgue norm estimate whenever the weighted inverse multiplicity is essentially bounded. If is injective and , the constant is at most . In dimension one a derivative bounded away from zero gives a global diffeomorphism; in higher dimensions determinant bounds alone do not.
Graph of a differential one-form Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
A differential one-form is a smooth section of a vector bundle . Its graph is its image as a section, and the projection restricts to a diffeomorphism onto . Pullback of the Liouville one-form by that section equals , making the twisted Lagrangian graph criterion immediate.
Hyperregular Lagrangian 2026-10-06
A Lagrangian is hyperregular when its fiber derivative, sending a velocity to its conjugate momentum, is a global diffeomorphism from the tangent bundle to the cotangent bundle. This gives a globally defined Legendre transform in mechanics and a global equivalence between the Euler-Lagrange equations and Hamilton's equations. With time dependence this requirement is imposed at each time, with a smooth inverse depending on time.
Inverse function theorem Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The inverse function theorem answers a practical question: can nearby outputs be used to recover nearby inputs uniquely and smoothly? Its useful surprise is that a nonlinear function can be tested using its linear derivative. If the first-order changes preserve all input directions, then, on a sufficiently small region, the nonlinear map can also be reversed. This is the basis for treating a nonlinear map as a coordinate transformation.
Precisely, let be continuously differentiable on an open subset of Euclidean space, let , and put . If is an invertible linear map, there are open neighbourhoods of and of such that is a bijection with a continuously differentiable inverse function . Thus this restriction is a diffeomorphism. In coordinates the test is , using the Jacobian determinant. The derivative of a local inverse map is obtained by inverting the Jacobian matrix, at the corresponding input. [ref]
For a one-dimensional example, has . Near , the inverse function is , and the inverse function rule gives . But has no inverse function on the whole real line, since and give the same output. The theorem supplies a local restriction, not global injectivity. At zero, the derivative test fails; the nonnegative branch still has a square root inverse, but that inverse has no finite derivative at zero. [ref]
Here is a two-dimensional example with an invertible derivative everywhere and infinitely repeated outputs:
The exponential function turns into a positive radius, while is the angle in polar coordinates. Restricting, for example, to and produces the reversible patch pictured below. On its image, with Cartesian coordinates and , the inverse function is
The arctangent selects the angle near zero. Without an angle restriction, for every integer , so there is no single global inverse function. This map is a local diffeomorphism but is not injective.
Figure 1.
A small rectangular coordinate patch maps reversibly to a curved sector, despite global angle repetition
. Details.
The short proof idea is to correct a guessed input using the inverse linear response. With , solving is equivalent to finding a fixed point of
At , the derivative vanishes. Continuity makes a contraction mapping on a sufficiently small closed ball, which it maps into itself when is sufficiently close to . The contraction mapping theorem then gives existence and uniqueness there. Establishing the smooth dependence on completes the inverse theorem. This explains why the nonlinearity can be tolerated: its correction has a small local slope.[ref]
Isometry group 2026-10-06
The isometry group of a metric space consists of its bijective isometries, with composition as the group operation. For a Riemannian metric, these are the diffeomorphisms preserving the metric tensor. Right translations of a right-invariant Riemannian metric supply a faithful subgroup isomorphic to the underlying Lie group.
Knot Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A knot is the image of a smooth embedding , considered up to ambient isotopy. The circle supplies a closed loop with no free ends; the smooth embedding condition rules out self-intersections and requires a nonzero tangent vector in a regular parametrization. The equivalent convention uses the three-sphere: removing a point outside the knot identifies the remaining space with three-dimensional Euclidean space by stereographic projection.
More precisely, knots are equivalent if there is a smooth family of diffeomorphisms of the ambient space, for , such that is the identity and . Every intermediate remains a smooth embedding. This ambient isotopy allows bending, stretching and moving a loop, but neither cutting it nor letting strands cross through each other. We compare the embedded images rather than their parametrizations; an oriented knot additionally remembers a direction of travel.
For a worked example, start with , where is taken modulo , and use
Both scale factors stay positive, so each is a diffeomorphism. At the circle becomes the ellipse , yet its knot type is still the unknot. Exact lengths and angles are therefore irrelevant to knot type; self-intersection is the obstruction that the deformation must avoid.
Left and right translation on a Lie group Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-14
For a Lie group , left and right translation are the diffeomorphisms and . They commute: .
Lie group isomorphism 2026-10-14
An isomorphism of Lie groups is a group isomorphism that is also a diffeomorphism. Both the homomorphism and its inverse preserve the smooth structures. Its identity differential is a Lie algebra isomorphism, but an isomorphism of Lie algebras determines a global Lie group isomorphism without extra period data only for connected simply connected groups.
Local diffeomorphism Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
A local diffeomorphism is a differentiable map that restricts near every point to a diffeomorphism onto an open subset of its target. The local inverse functions need not combine into a single global inverse function: different parts of the domain of a function can map onto the same output region.
For continuously differentiable maps between open subsets of , being a local diffeomorphism is equivalent to having an invertible derivative at every point. The inverse function theorem proves one direction. For the other, the chain rule for each local inverse function gives two inverse linear maps. The periodic angle example under the inverse function theorem has this property everywhere, even though it has infinitely many inputs for every point of the punctured plane. The noninjective map with constant Jacobian determinant gives another useful distinction: even a constant nonzero Jacobian determinant need not give global injectivity.
Every local diffeomorphism is an open map. To see this, take an open subset of the source and intersect it with the neighbourhoods where the map is a diffeomorphism. Each local image is open, and their union is the full image. Thus nearby outputs remain available locally, despite the possible global ambiguity.
Local exponential chart Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
Since the differential of the Exponential map of a Lie group at zero is the identity, the inverse function theorem makes it a diffeomorphism on a sufficiently small neighborhood of zero. Its local inverse is a logarithm near the group identity. It need not extend to a global logarithm, even for the real general linear group.
Choose a vector subspace complementary to the Lie algebra of a closed subgroup . The differential of at is , so the inverse function theorem makes a local diffeomorphism. Sufficiently small nonzero cannot satisfy : otherwise limit directions of a closed subgroup give a nonzero element of . Consequently is locally exactly the coordinate slice , proving that it is an embedded submanifold.
Moser theorem for volume forms Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-07
On a compact connected smooth manifold without boundary, two positive volume forms for the same orientation are related by an orientation-preserving diffeomorphism exactly when their total integrals agree. A positive interpolation and Cartan's magic formula give the smooth isotopy realizing the equality.
A four-dimensional Majorana spinor gravitino has real components, minus four local supersymmetry gauge functions, leaving twelve before using any Euler-Lagrange field equation. A vierbein has sixteen real components, minus six local Lorentz transformation and four diffeomorphism gauge functions, leaving six. Equivalently, a symmetric metric tensor has . The propagating graviton and massless gravitino each have two states on shell. Six bosonic auxiliary field components complete an off-shell supergravity multiplet.
Orientation double cover 2026-10-14
An oriented coordinate neighborhood of a smooth manifold gives two sheets distinguished by the sign of its orientation. On an overlap, the sheets agree where the two local orientation forms differ by a positive function. These open agreement sets define a two-sheeted smooth covering space, whose projection is locally a diffeomorphism.
Parallelization of a Lie group by left translations Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
A basis of the Lie algebra of a Lie group gives a global frame of a vector bundle of its tangent bundle by . Left translation is a diffeomorphism, so the left-invariant vector fields are independent everywhere. Every Lie group is therefore a parallelizable manifold.
The Riemannian exponential map at is , where is the affinely parametrized geodesic with and . Its derivative at zero is the identity. The inverse function theorem therefore gives a normal neighbourhood , where is an open star-shaped neighbourhood of zero on which is a diffeomorphism. Star-shaped means whenever and ; it ensures the radial geodesic remains in . This is distinct from a convex normal neighbourhood, which imposes a unique short geodesic between every pair of its points.
The radial distance in a normal neighbourhood and the unit radial vector field in a normal neighbourhood are defined, respectively, by
The function is continuous at and smooth away from , but is not differentiable at in positive dimension. Some conventions use the scaled radial field and the smooth radial function instead; the associated gradient identities will distinguish them.
The Gauss lemma states that for and ,
To prove it, consider the geodesic variation for and small . Set and . The Levi-Civita connection has zero torsion tensor, so . Each -curve is a geodesic, hence , and its squared speed is the constant . At ,
Since , integration gives . At , and , proving the Gauss lemma. Taking shows ; taking shows that is orthogonal to the images of tangent vectors to the tangent-space sphere, hence to the geodesic spheres in .
For of unit length, write the unit-speed radial geodesic as . Differentiating this expression and substituting gives
To identify the gradient, write an arbitrary tangent vector at as . Differentiating and using the Gauss lemma,
By the defining property of the gradient,
The latter field extends smoothly across by , because is the smooth quadratic function in normal coordinates.
The same calculation also proves local radial minimization: for a piecewise smooth curve in the normal neighbourhood, , so its length from to is at least , attained by the radial geodesic. Take a small tangent ball with closure inside a larger normal ball. Any path leaving the small ball before reaching a point inside it has already accumulated length at least its radius. Therefore, for points in the small ball, even when competitors may leave the neighbourhood. This local argument does not assert that equals global Riemannian distance throughout every arbitrarily large star-shaped normal neighbourhood.
A subset is a -dimensional embedded submanifold if, with the subspace topology, every point has a smooth ambient chart in which is the intersection of the coordinate domain with . These slice charts give its smooth structure, and its inclusion is an embedding.
The inverse function theorem says that a smooth map with invertible derivative at restricts to a diffeomorphism between open neighborhoods of and . A point is a regular value of a smooth map when is surjective at every .
Choose local coordinates centered at and . At a fiber point, rank means that, after relabeling coordinates, the first columns of the coordinate derivative form an invertible matrix. Define
Its derivative is block upper triangular with that invertible block and an identity block, hence invertible. The inverse function theorem makes a new ambient coordinate chart in which is exactly . Therefore the regular level set theorem gives
when the fiber is nonempty. An empty fiber is regular vacuously; if , it is the only possible regular fiber. The construction does not assign a negative dimension to a nonempty manifold.
For the projective hyperplane, the map
is injective with inverse on its image. At every image point, either or is nonzero; the corresponding standard projective chart uses as one coordinate and cuts the image out by setting it to zero. The map and inverse are smooth in these charts, and the slice condition proves
Nevertheless, is the single affine chart , diffeomorphic to , so it is connected. If a smooth real function had exactly this zero set with zero regular, the inverse function theorem near any point of would give both positive and negative values off . On the connected complement it never vanishes, so continuity requires its sign to be constant. This contradiction is the obstruction that regular zero hypersurfaces have disconnected complements. Thus
It illustrates why local defining equations for an embedded hypersurface need not glue to a global real defining function, as in real projective hyperplane is not a global regular zero set.
A rank- complex vector bundle is a smooth map whose fibers are -dimensional complex vector spaces, with local diffeomorphisms commuting with projection and linear on every fiber. Define transition functions of a vector bundle by
They are smooth and obey
on the appropriate double/triple overlaps. The structure group of a vector bundle is a Lie subgroup in which a chosen set of transitions takes values. It records allowed changes of fiber frame; different trivializations may exhibit different reductions of that group.
Using the same cocycle, glue the disjoint union of by
The cocycle makes this an equivalence relation and makes its local charts compatible. Right multiplication is well-defined because it commutes with the left gluing matrices. It is free and transitive on each fiber. These charts therefore construct the associated right principal bundle with group .
For the natural line realization, take the complex tautological line bundle . Its nonzero vectors identify with by , with projection . On the two standard charts, use and . The local frames are and , so . Normalize them using the ambient Hermitian norm:
If , then . Thus the unitary transitions of the tautological line over the projective line are
These are smooth on the overlap . A Hermitian metric on a smooth complex vector bundle generally permits precisely this unitary reduction; here the ambient norm supplies it explicitly.
The corresponding principal circle bundle consists of unit vectors in the tautological line. Sending to identifies its total space with , and the right circle action is . Identify with using
Its affine-coordinate inverse on the chart is ; the other chart handles the missing pole. This gives a diffeomorphism, and the projection becomes the Hopf fibration
There is a distinction if the stated punctured-bundle identification is interpreted only as a projection-preserving diffeomorphism, rather than a fiber-linear identification. It does not determine whether the complex line is tautological or dual: for a nonzero , the unique with gives a smooth map . Locally it is inversion of a nonzero complex number. Thus punctured line bundles do not determine their duality sign.
For completeness, these are the only possible signs here. Complex line bundles over are described by the clutching construction with a loop in , reducible to , and its integer winding number determines the bundle: a zero-degree ratio has a logarithm and can be removed by changes of trivializations extending over the two disks. For winding number , the unit circle bundle has fundamental group , as the two solid-torus trivializations identify the common fiber generator and impose its th power as the equatorial gluing relation. There is a fiberwise radial deformation retraction from the punctured line bundle onto its unit circle bundle. Since retracts to simply connected , the hypothesis forces .
Consequently the allowed unitary transitions are the displayed or its reciprocal, according to the bundle's sign. For the dual, the same underlying Hopf projection has the inverse principal action . In either case the principal total space and projection are ; the purely diffeomorphic hypothesis alone leaves the circle-action sign unspecified.