Free dihedral action on a drilled torus 2026-10-25
Let act on Euclidean space by rotations through about a vertical axis and half-turns about equally spaced horizontal axes. A round solid torus about the vertical axis, drilled through radially along the places where the horizontal axes cross its tube, has a smooth boundary of genus after equivariant rounding of its rims. All nonidentity rotation axes lie in the complement of this boundary, so the induced group action is a free action of a group. Each bore replaces two closed discs by an annulus, lowering Euler characteristic by two and increasing genus by one. The boundary orientation is preserved; its induced Riemann surface has an unramified quotient space of genus two by the Riemann-Hurwitz formula.
Past exam of the geometry of surfaces course of the University of Oxford 2023 2 d Solution 2026-10-25
For a free action of a group, every stabilizer subgroup is trivial. Hence every ramification index of a holomorphic map is one, and the projection is an unramified covering map of degree of a holomorphic map . The Riemann-Hurwitz formula reduces toThis is also the multiplicativity of Euler characteristic under a finite covering.
Past exam of the geometry of surfaces course of the University of Oxford 2023 2 e Solution 2026-10-25
The dihedral group here has order . Substituting into part (d) givesIn particular, requires genus seven. A geometric construction is to start with a round solid torus about the vertical axis, then drill thin radial tunnels through its tube in the horizontal midplane, equally spaced at azimuths , . The tunnels run from the central opening to the exterior; their directions are horizontal and radial. Round all their rims in the same way, preserving the dihedral symmetry, and let be the boundary of the resulting solid.
A genus-seven surface with a free dihedral action: six radial bores contain the horizontal rotation axes
. Details. Here is why the construction has exactly the required properties. Every nonidentity power of is a rotation in three dimensions fixing the vertical axis, which lies in the central opening and is disjoint from . Each element is a half-turn about a horizontal line at azimuth , modulo . The such lines meet the original solid torus in short radial segments. Each segment lies strictly inside one drilled tunnel, so these axes are also disjoint from . A nonidentity rotation in three dimensions fixes only its axis. Thus no nonidentity element fixes a point of , proving a free action of a group.
Rotation by permutes the tunnels, while preserves their arrangement and the original solid torus. Hence is preserved by the two generators and therefore by . The tunnels can be chosen sufficiently thin to be pairwise disjoint, and the rounding can be made group-invariant in small disjoint neighbourhoods of their rims. It neither changes the genus nor introduces an intersection with any axis.
Each tunnel removes two discs from the existing boundary and inserts the cylindrical wall of the bore. Its contribution to Euler characteristic is : the two removed discs contribute , and the inserted annulus and its boundary circles have zero Euler characteristic. The boundary remains connected and orientable, so each tunnel increases genus by one. Starting from a torus and drilling tunnels therefore gives . The construction also supplies a Riemann surface: use the complex structure associated with the induced oriented Riemannian metric. The ambient generators are isometries preserving the solid and ambient orientation of a vector space, so they preserve the induced boundary orientation and act by biholomorphisms. Part (d) then confirms that the quotient space has genus two. This is a free dihedral action on a drilled torus.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 14 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A smooth right group action is a smooth map from to , with and . It is a free action of a group if implies .
A smooth principal bundle consists of such a free action and a surjective map whose fibres are the orbits, together with equivariant local trivializationswhere . The trivializations are diffeomorphisms; in particular the bundle projection is a submersion.
For two such trivializations, fixes the base coordinate and is equivariant. Write . Equivariance immediately givesThe function is smooth because and are smooth. This proves the general transition function of a principal bundle formula; the multiplier is on the left, even though the original action is on the right.
For the explicit bundle, represent a point of by a nonzero vector modulo nonzero real scaling. The map sends to the complex line , so it is well-defined and surjective. Its smoothness follows from the local ratio charts below. Ordinary scalar multiplication by would not be free, since acts trivially on real projective classes. Instead defineThe two possible roots differ by a real sign, so give the same class. This is independent of the real representative of . Products of chosen roots show the right action law, and the identity acts trivially. Locally on a smooth square-root branch exists; these local definitions agree projectively and prove global smoothness of the action.
If , then for some nonzero real . Since and , this forces and hence . The action is free. Two points in the same fibre have representatives for some ; absorb into the real scaling and use . Thus the orbits are exactly the fibres.
Let and . Using these base coordinates, defineBoth formulas are invariant under real nonzero scaling, including negative scaling. Their inverses areAgain the sign of the root does not matter. Direct substitution shows they are two-sided inverses. The forward maps are smooth, and local square-root branches prove that the inverses are smooth. Under the right action, each squared phase is multiplied by , so the maps are equivariant. They are therefore genuine principal trivializations of the principal circle bundle on real projective three-space.
On the overlap , we have andConsequentlyWhen the base point itself, rather than its chart coordinate, is written as , its coordinate remains in the general transition formula. The opposite transition has reciprocal multiplier. The doubled phase is essential to freeness and is not the ordinary Hopf-bundle phase.
Write a point of Real projective space as a nonzero vector modulo real nonzero scaling. The map to Complex projective space sends its class to the complex line through that vector. A free right action of the circle group is where ; the two possible roots differ by a real sign and therefore give the same projective point. Local smooth square-root branches prove smoothness. Over , the fibre coordinate is ; over , it is . On the overlap , the transition function of a principal bundle is . Its phase winds twice. Ordinary scalar multiplication by instead has a kernel of order two and is not a free action of a group.
