- Round function
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In topology and in calculus, a round function is a scalar function , over a manifold M, whose critical points form one or several connected components, each homeomorphic to the circle S1, also called critical loops. They are special cases of Morse-Bott functions.
For instance
For example, let M be the torus. Let
Then we know that a map
given by
is a parametrization for almost all of M. Now, via the projection we get the restriction
G = G(θ,ϕ) = sin θ is a function whose critical sets are determined by
this is if and only if .
These two values for θ give the critical sets
which represent two extremal circles over the torus M.
Observe that the Hessian for this function is
which clearly it reveals itself as of rankHess(G) = 1 at the tagged circles, making the critical point degenerate, that is, showing that the critical points are not isolated.
Round complexity
Mimicking the L-S category theory one can define the round complexity asking for whether or not exist round functions on manifolds and/or for the minimum number of critical loops.
References
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