X-Nico

5 unusual facts about Riemann surface


Complex manifold

Riemann surfaces, two dimensional manifolds equipped with a complex structure, which are topologically classified by the genus, are an important example of this phenomenon.

History of manifolds and varieties

In 1857, Riemann introduced the concept of Riemann surfaces as part of a study of the process of analytic continuation; Riemann surfaces are now recognized as one-dimensional complex manifolds.

History of topos theory

The idea of a Grothendieck topology (also known as a site) has been characterised by John Tate as a bold pun on the two senses of Riemann surface.

Potential flow

Note that multi-valued functions such as the natural logarithm may be used, but attention must be confined to a single Riemann surface.

Veech surface

In mathematics, a Veech surface is a translation surface (X,ω) (a Riemann surface X with a holomorphic 1-form ω) whose group SL(X,ω) of affine diffeomorphisms is a lattice in SL2(R) (a discrete subgroup of cofinite volume).


Hadamard's dynamical system

The system considers the motion of a free (frictionless) particle on a surface of constant negative curvature, the simplest compact Riemann surface, which is the surface of genus two: a donut with two holes.

Prym variety

In its original form, it was applied to an unramified double covering of a Riemann surface, and was used by F. Schottky and H. W. E. Jung in relation with the Schottky problem, as it now called, of characterising Jacobian varieties among abelian varieties.


see also

Riemann–Roch theorem

The theorem for compact Riemann surfaces can be deduced from the algebraic version using Chow's theorem and the GAGA principle: in fact, every compact Riemann surface is defined by algebraic equations in some complex projective space.