Definition
A space X is called semi-locally simply connected if every point in X has a neighborhood U with the property that every loop in U can be contracted to a single point within X (i.e. every loop is nullhomotopic). Note that the neighborhood U need not be simply connected: though every loop in U must be contractible within X, the contraction is not required to take place inside of U. For this reason, a space can be semi-locally simply connected without being locally simply connected.
Equivalent to this definition, a space X is semi-locally simply connected if every point in X has a neighborhood U for which the homomorphism from the fundamental group of U to the fundamental group of X, induced by the inclusion map of U into X, is trivial.
Most of the main theorems about covering spaces, including the existence of a universal cover and the Galois correspondence, require a space to be path-connected, locally path-connected, and semi-locally simply connected. In particular, this condition is necessary for a space to have a simply connected covering space.
Read more about this topic: Semi-locally Simply Connected
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“I’m beginning to think that the proper definition of “Man” is “an animal that writes letters.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)