Grassmann manifolds
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1 Introduction
Grassmann manifolds are named after Hermann Grassmann, a German school teacher in Stettin who developed basic notions of linear algebra. They play a key role in topology and geometry as the universal spaces of vector bundles. See also Grassmannian
2 Construction and examples
Let be the real, complex or quaternion field and a vector space over of dimension and let . A Grassmannian of -dimensional subspaces is a set of -dimensional subspaces. The set is a quotient of a subset of consisting of linearly independent -tuples of vectors with the subspace topology. We define topology on as the quotient topology. Grassmannian is a homogeneous space of the general linear group. General linear group acts transitively on with an isotropy group consisting of automorphisms preserving a given subspace. If the space is equipped with a scalar product (hermitian metric resp.) then the group of isometries acts transitively and the isotropy group of is .
Note that the Grassmann manifold around is locally modelled on the vector space
The Grassmann manifold is equipped with the canonical, tautological vector bundle which is a subbundle of the trivial bundle . The total space is The total space of the associated principal bundle is a Stiefel manifold.
The tangent bundle to Grassmaniann can be expressed in terms of the canonical bundle:
The Grassmannians are projective spaces, denoted . Note that , where . If we identify with the one-point compactification of the projection of the canonical principal bundle corresponds to the map given by where . Note, that the same formula works for octonions , however the higher dimensional projective spaces over octonions do not exist. The maps for are called the Hopf maps and they play a very important role in homotopy theory; a fibre of is a sphere .
There is an embedding of the Grassmannian in the Cartesian space which assigns to every subspace the orthogonal projection on it. If is equipped with a norm, the embedding defines a natural (operator) metric on .
Infinite dimensional Grassmannians. Natural inclusions of vector space defines inclusions of Grassmannians. The colimit of the resulting sequence is denoted and also . One can also take the colimit with respect to both dimension of the space and of the subspaces. We have a sequence of inclusions and its colimit is denoted
Invariants
Homotopy groups of Grassmannians are closely related to homotopy groups of spheres via the appropriate fibration sequences. They also imply that the groups do not depend on , if Homotopy groups in the stable range are described by the Bott periodicity theorem.
Proposition 4.1 {(R.Bott).} For each there are isomorphisms: and
Cohomology groups.
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3 Classification/Characterization
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4 Further discussion
Grassmann manifolds are examples of coadjoint orbits [Kirillov2004].
5 References
- [Kirillov2004] A. A. Kirillov, Lectures on the orbit method, Graduate Studies in Mathematics 64, American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2004. MR2069175 (2005c:22001) Zbl 02121486
- [Milnor&Stasheff1974] J. W. Milnor and J. D. Stasheff, Characteristic classes, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J., 1974. MR0440554 (55 #13428) Zbl 1079.57504
6 External links
- The Wikipedia page on Grassmannian