Lecture notes: Part II Differential Geometry

Clément Mouhot (E1.20, c.mouhot@dpmms.cam.ac.uk)

LECTURE 1
1 Introduction
1.1 Ressources
Do not hesitate to email me for questions related to the course. I might take a few days
to reply if the term is getting really busy, but I normally make sure to never an email
unanswered. I will keep the example sheets from last year. I will give access on moodle to
the lecture notes of some previous incarnations of this course, by Gabriel Paternain and by
Mihalis Dafermos (typed and extended by Paul Minter). Excellent books are also listed in
the syllabus, you can find them in the library or on libgen.

1.2 Overview of the course

At its core, this course is in fact a course on curves and surfaces in R3 . In spite of this
restriction it is a great way to introduce many concepts of modern differential geometry. In
particular we will give rigorous definitions of manifolds in Rn (the intrinsic viewpoint will
come later in Part III), then we will study the “local” metric properties of manifolds that
can be expressed in local coordinates but are defined independently of the choice of local
coordinates. We then study manifold minimising these metric properties and finish with an
example of “local-to-global principle” where global topological properties are recovered from
these local metric properties. In more details:
Chapter 1: Differential Topology.
This chapter is devoted to the study of topological and smooth properties of smooth
manifolds, without the distance, metric and shapes that characterize the next chapters and
are properly part of differential geometry. This first chapter introduces smooth manifolds in
Rn and smooth maps between them. Manifolds are intuitively subsets of Rn where it makes
sense to talk about smooth functions. The highlight of this chapter is then a proof of Brower’s
fixed point theorem based on some homotopy arguments.
Chapter 2: Curves and Surfaces in R3 .
This chapter introduces the curvature κ and the torsion τ of curves. The torsion is a
measure of how far a curve is from sitting in a plane at a given point. It then moves on
to surfaces (manifold of dimension 2 in R3 ) and introduces the first fundamental form, the
Gauss map, the second fundamental form and the Gaussian curvature of surfaces; the latter
is a measure of how much normals to a surface are changing. The highlight of this chapter is

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a proof of the “remarkable” theorem of Gauss (“Theorema Egregium”) that states that the
Gaussian curvature is invariant under isometric diffeomorphism.
Chapter 3: Variation Theory.
This chapter studies extremal manifolds for the notion of length or area introduced in
the previous chapter. In dimension 1, it introduces the curves locally minimising length on
a surface, aka geodesics (e.g. straight lines in a plane, great circles on a sphere, etc). In
dimension 2 it introduces surfaces that locally minimise their area under small deformations,
aka minimal surfaces. The highlight of this chapter is a beautiful connexion between minimal
surfaces and the tools you have seen in complex variables last year.
Chapter 4: Global Riemannian Geometry of Surfaces.
The first chapter dealt with “global” qualitative properties and the second and third
chapters dealt with “local” quantitative (metric) properties. This last chapter introduces the
powerful “local-to-global principle” that sometimes allows to connect these two viewpoints.
It is introduced with the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, whose proof is the highlight of the chapter
and of the course. If K is the Gaussian curvature and χ is the Euler characteristic (number
of vertices minus number of edges plus number of faces) of the surface S, then
Z
K = 2πχ.
S
Noting that χ is a topological invariant of the surface and K is a local geometric invariant,
this tells us something very powerful: the topology of the surface S puts restrictions on the
geometry of S, and vice-versa. This formula is known as the Gauss-Bonnet formula. The
proof is based on a “triangulation”, i.e. the decomposition of the surface into many small
geodesic triangles on which one can relate of the sum of angles to the curvature.
To conclude this overview: this is a course dense with deep abstract concepts. Something
that will however help us is the overlap with IB Geometry (curves, surfaces, Gauss map,
geodesics and exponential map. . . ).

2 Chapter 1: Differential topology

N denotes the natural integers and N∗ denotes the positive natural integers.

2.1 Smooth maps and smooth manifolds

Definition 1. Let m, n ∈ N∗ and U ⊂ Rn open. A map f : U → Rm is smooth if it has
partial derivatives at every order at every point of U . Let X ⊂ Rn not necessarily open. A
map f : X → Rm is smooth if for every x ∈ X there is Ux ⊂ Rn open that includes x and
F : Ux → Rm smooth (in the sense above) so that F|X∩Ux = f|X∩Ux .
Remark 2. Note that smoothness is a local notion (and local definitions could be given).
By keeping track of the image of f , we can ask whether an inverse satisfying the same
smoothness property exists. When it does we have:
Definition 3. Given X ⊂ Rn , Y ⊂ Rm , a smooth map f : X → Y is a diffeomorphism
if it is bijective and its inverse f −1 : Y → X is smooth. When it is the case, we say that X
and Y are diffeomorphic.

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 Now that we have the notion of smoothness on general subsets, we can define the notion
of manifold.

Definition 4. Given k, n ∈ N∗ , the subset X ⊂ Rn is a smooth k-dimensional manifold

(or simply “k-manifold”) if around each point x ∈ X there is a neighbourhood Vx ⊂ X
(for the induced topology of X) that is diffeomorphic to an open subset U of Rk . Such a
diffeomorphism ϕ : U ⊂ Rk → Vx ⊂ X is call a parametrisation of Vx . The inverse map
ϕ−1 : Vx → U is called chart, or coordinate system, on Vx . The integer k is then called
the dimension of X, and denoted k = dim X.

Remark 5. It is standard to slightly abuse notation and write ϕ−1 = (x1 , . . . , xk ), meaning
in fact that each coordinate xi is a function of v ∈ Vx . Note also that the parametrisation is
not unique. In particular, one can always translate U so that ϕ−1 (x) = 0 when convenient.

Example 6. • Any open set U ⊂ Rn is a smooth manifold of dimension n in Rn . In particular

Rn is trivially a manifold of dimension n.
• Let us prove that the unit circle S1 = {(x, y) ∈ R2 | x2 + y 2 = 1} is a smooth√ manifold
of dimension 1 in R . The map ϕ : (−1, 1) → S ⊂ R defined by ϕ(x) := (x, 1 − x2 ) is a
2 1 2

diffeomorphism (check it) which parametrises

√ the upper half circle. Similarly ϕ̃ : (−1, 1) →
S1 ⊂ R2 defined by ϕ̃(x) := (x, √ − 1 − x 2 ) parametrises the lower half circle, ψ : (−1, 1) →

S1 ⊂ R2 defined by ψ(x) := ( 1 − x2 , x) parametrises the right half circle, etc. This allows
to cover the circle with overlapping charts, which proves the result.
• Let us prove that the sphere S2 = {(x, y, z) ∈ R3 | x2 + y 2 + z 2 = 1} is a smooth
manifold of dimension
√ 2 in R3 . The map ϕ : B(0, 1) ⊂ R2 → S2 ⊂ R3 defined by
ϕ(x, y) := (x, y, 1 − x − xy ) is a diffeomorphism (check it) which parametrises
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√ the upper
half sphere. Similarly ϕ̃ : B(0, 1) ⊂ R2 → S2 ⊂ R3 defined by ϕ̃(x, y) := (x, y, − 1 − x2 − xy )
parametrises
√ the lower half sphere, ψ : B(0, 1) ⊂ R2 → S2 ⊂ R3 defined by ψ(x, y) :=
(x, 1 − x2 − xy , y) parametrises the eastern half sphere, etc. This allows to cover the sphere
with overlapping charts, which proves the result.

Exercise 7. Extend the previous argument to prove that Sn = {(x1 , . . . , xn+1 ) ∈ Rn+1 | x21 +
x22 + · · · + x2n+1 = 1} is a smooth manifold of dimension n in Rn+1 , for any n ∈ N∗ .