Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 ii Paper 4 21I Solution Created 2026-09-23 Updated 2026-09-25
Cut the square model of the Klein bottle along the midline parallel to the pair of sides whose identification reverses orientation. Each half becomes a Möbius band, and the two new boundary circles are identified. If and are the core loops of these two bands, each boundary travels twice around its core. The Seifert-van Kampen theorem therefore gives
Writing and converts this into the standard Klein-bottle presentationThe orientation homomorphism sends both and to the nonzero element of . Its kernel is the index-two subgroupBy the classification of connected covering spaces, determines the orientation double cover of the Klein bottleChoosing torus generators along the two translation directions, we may takeThese commute: the standard relation says that conjugates to , so centralizes .
The space is the mapping cylinder of with its unused end omitted. Sliding to gives a deformation retraction of onto the bottom quotient . Hence
Finally suppose is open and homeomorphic to , and identify the bottom copy of inside . This is compact and therefore closed in the Hausdorff space . Apply van Kampen, in its groupoid form if intersections are disconnected, toThe intersection deformation retracts to a positive-height torus, and its map to has image preciselyThe orientation homomorphismis zero on this intersection, so it is compatible with the trivial homomorphism from to . The pushout property in van Kampen extends it to a surjectionThereforeThis is the Klein-bottle mapping-cylinder obstruction to simple connectivity.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 ib Paper 2 11G a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
If in the torus, thenThis is Klein-equivalent to by taking . Hence descends to a well-defined continuous map
The deck group of the Klein bottle has an index-two subgroup consisting of transformations with even ; it is generated by translations and . This is exactly the image under of the torus deck lattice. Therefore the orientation double cover of the Klein bottle has two sheets: