X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Betti number


Betti number

This requires also the use of some of the results of Hodge theory, about the Hodge Laplacian.

Symplectic manifold

Their intersections display rigidity properties not possessed by smooth manifolds; the Arnold conjecture gives the sum of the submanifold's Betti numbers as a lower bound for the number of self intersections of a smooth Lagrangian submanifold, rather than the Euler characteristic in the smooth case.

Symplectomorphism

If the first Betti number of a connected symplectic manifold is zero, symplectic and Hamiltonian vector fields coincide, so the notions of Hamiltonian isotopy and symplectic isotopy of symplectomorphisms coincide.


History of manifolds and varieties

Henri Poincaré's 1895 paper Analysis Situs studied three-and-higher-dimensional manifolds(which he called "varieties"), giving rigorous definitions of homology, homotopy (which had originally been defined in the context of late nineteenth-century knot theory, developed by Maxwell and others), and Betti numbers and raised a question, today known as the Poincaré conjecture, based his new concept of the fundamental group.


see also