Morse surgery
surgery
A transformation of smooth manifolds to which the level manifold of a smooth function is subjected on passage through a non-degenerate critical point; it is the most important construction in the topology of manifolds.
Let be a smooth
-dimensional manifold (without boundary) in which a
-dimensional sphere
is (smoothly) imbedded. Suppose that the normal bundle of
in
is trivial, that is, a closed tubular neighbourhood
of
in
decomposes into a direct product
, where
is a disc of dimension
. After having chosen such a decomposition, remove the interior of
from
. A manifold is obtained whose boundary decomposes into a product
of spheres. But the manifold
has precisely the same boundary. Identifying the boundaries of
and
by a diffeomorphism preserving the product structure of
, a manifold
without boundary is again obtained. It is called the result of surgery of
along
.
In the realization of a surgery it is necessary to give a decomposition of the neighbourhood of
into a direct product, that is, a trivialization of the normal bundle of
in
; in this connection different trivializations (riggings) may give essentially distinct (even homotopically) manifolds
.
The number is called the index of the surgery, and the pair
its type. If
is obtained from
by a surgery of type
, then
is obtained from
by a surgery of type
. For
,
is a disjoint union of
(which may be empty) and
. The construction of a surgery may also be carried out for piecewise-linear and topological manifolds.
Example. For and
the result of surgery is a disjoint union of spheres, and for
a torus. For
and
the product
is obtained. The case
and
is more complicated: if
is imbedded in
in the standard way (as a great circle), then, depending on the choice of the trivialization of the normal bundle, all lens spaces (cf. Lens space) are obtained; if, however, a knotting of
is allowed, then a still larger set of three-dimensional manifolds is obtained.
If is the boundary of an
-dimensional manifold
, then
will be the boundary of the manifold
obtained from
by glueing a handle of the index of
. In particular, if
is a smooth function on
and if
are numbers such that
is compact and contains a unique non-degenerate critical point
, then
is obtained from
by a surgery of index
, where
is the Morse index of
. In a more general form, any surgery
of a manifold
of index
defines a bordism (cobordism)
(obtained from the product
by glueing a handle of index
to its "right-hand boundary"
), and on the triple
there is a Morse function with a unique critical point of index
; moreover, any bordism
on which there is such a Morse function is obtained in this way. Hence (and from the existence of Morse functions on triples) it follows that two manifolds are bordant if one can be obtained from the other by a sequence of surgeries.
With the known precautions on the treatment of orientations, the result of a surgery on an oriented manifold is again an oriented manifold. In general, for any structure series (see
-structure) it is possible to define the idea of
-surgery; in this connection, two manifolds are
-bordant if they are connected by a finite sequence of
-surgeries.
The important role of surgery in the topology of manifolds is explained by the fact that it allows one to "delicately" (without infringing on the various properties of manifolds) kill "superfluous" homotopy groups (the operation usually used to this end in homotopy theory, i.e. the operation of "glueing" cells, instantaneously leads out of the class of manifolds). In practice, all theorems on the classification of structures on manifolds are based on the question: Given a mapping of a closed manifold
into a CW-complex
, when does there exist a bordism
and a mapping
such that
and
is a homotopy equivalence. The natural route to the solution of this problem is to annihilate the kernels of the homomorphisms
by a sequence of surgeries (where
are the homotopy groups). If this succeeds, the resulting mapping will be a homotopy equivalence. The study of the corresponding obstructions (lying in the so-called Wall groups, see [4] and Wall group) is one of the most important stimuli in the development of algebraic
-theory.
References
[1] | M. Morse, "The calculus of variations in the large" , Amer. Math. Soc. (1934) MR1451874 MR1501555 MR1561686 MR1501489 MR1501428 Zbl 0011.02802 Zbl 60.0450.01 |
[2] | S.P. Novikov, "Homotopically equivalent smooth manifolds I" Transl. Amer. Math. Soc. , 48 (1965) pp. 271–396 Izv. Akad. Nauk SSSR Ser. Mat. , 28 : 2 (1964) pp. 365–474 MR0162246 Zbl 0151.32103 |
[3] | M.A. Kervaire, J.W. Milnor, "Groups of homotopy spheres: I" Ann. of Math. , 77 (1963) pp. 504–537 MR0148075 Zbl 0115.40505 |
[4] | A.S. Mishchenko, "Hermitian ![]() |
Comments
There are clear relations between surgery and Morse theory, as indicated above, which is why in the Russian literature the term Morse surgery is frequently used. In the Western literature one simply speaks of surgery. The construction was invented by J.W. Milnor ([a4]).
References
[a1] | W.B. Browder, "Surgery on simply-connected manifolds" , Springer (1972) MR0358813 Zbl 0239.57016 |
[a2] | C.T.C. Wall, "Surgery on compact manifolds" , Acad. Press (1970) MR0431216 Zbl 0219.57024 |
[a3] | C.T.-C. Wall, "Surgery on non-simply connected manifolds" Ann. of Math. , 84 (1966) pp. 217–276 |
[a4] | J.W. Milnor, "A procedure for killing the homotopy groups of differentiable manifolds" , Differential geometry , Proc. Symp. Pure Math. , 3 , Amer. Math. Soc. (1961) pp. 39–55 MR130696 |
[a5] | J.W. Milnor, "Morse theory" , Princeton Univ. Press (1963) MR0163331 Zbl 0108.10401 |
[a6] | M.W. Hirsch, "Differential topology" , Springer (1976) pp. Chapt. 5, Sect. 3 MR0448362 Zbl 0356.57001 |
Morse surgery. Encyclopedia of Mathematics. URL: http://encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Morse_surgery&oldid=24110