Cobordism - Surgery Construction

Surgery Construction

Recall that in general, if are manifolds with boundary, then the boundary of the product manifold is .

Now, given a manifold of dimension and an embedding, define the -manifold

obtained by surgery, via cutting out the interior of and gluing in along their boundary . The trace of the surgery

defines an elementary cobordism . Note that is obtained from by surgery on . This is called reversing the surgery.

Every cobordism is a union of elementary cobordisms, by the work of Morse, Thom and Milnor.

Read more about this topic:  Cobordism

Famous quotes containing the words surgery and/or construction:

    Ever since surgery began, man’s destiny has been to suffer, in order that he might be cured. And no one can change that, gentlemen.
    —Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)

    There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.
    John Dewey (1859–1952)