Описание:Differential topology may be defined as the study of those properties of differentiable manifolds which are invariant under diffeomorphism (differentiable
homeomorphism). Typical problem falling under this heading are the following:
1) Given two differentiable manifolds, under what conditions are they diffeomorphic? 2) Given a differentiable manifold, is it the boundary of some differentiable manifold-with- boundary? 3) Given a differentiable manifold, is it
parallelisable?
All these problems concern more than the topology of the manifold, yet
they do not belong to differential geometry, which usually assumes additional
structure (e.g., a connection or a metric). The most powerful tools in this subject
have been derived from the methods of algebraic topology. In particular, the
theory of characteristic classes is crucial, where-by one passes from the manifold
M to its tangent bundle, and thence to a cohomology class in M which depends
on this bundle.