Introduction to Smooth Manifolds

This book is an introductory graduate-level textbook on the theory of smooth manifolds. Its goal is to familiarize students with the tools they will need in order to use manifolds in mathematical or scientific research--- smooth structures, tangent vectors and covectors, vector bundles, immersed and embedded submanifolds, tensors, differential forms, de Rham cohomology, vector fields, flows, foliations, Lie derivatives, Lie groups, Lie algebras, and more. The approach is as concrete as possible, with pictures and intuitive discussions of how one should think geometrically about the abstract concepts, while making full use of the powerful tools that modern mathematics has to offer.

This second edition has been extensively revised and clarified, and the topics have been substantially rearranged. The book now introduces the two most important analytic tools, the rank theorem and the fundamental theorem on flows, much earlier so that they can be used throughout the book. A fewnew topics have been added, notably Sard’s theorem and transversality, a proof that infinitesimal Lie group actions generate global group actions, a more thorough study of first-order partial differential equations, a brief treatment of degree theory for smooth maps between compact manifolds, and an introduction to contact structures.

Prerequisites include a solid acquaintance with general topology, the fundamental group, and covering spaces, as well as basic undergraduate linear algebra and real analysis.

• Frobenius theorem
• Lie group
• Sard’s theorem
• Smooth structures
• Stokes's theorem
• Tangent vectors and covectors
• Whitney approximation theorem
• Whitney embedding theorem
• de Rham cohomology
• differential forms
• first-order partial differential equations
• foliations
• immersed and embedded submanifolds
• smooth manifolds
• tensors
• vector bundles
• vector fields and flows

From the reviews of the second edition:

“It starts off with five chapters covering basics on smooth manifolds up to submersions, immersions, embeddings, and of course submanifolds. … the book under review is laden with excellent exercises that significantly further the reader’s understanding of the material, and Lee takes great pains to motivate everything well all the way through … . a fine graduate-level text for differential geometers as well as people like me, fellow travelers who always wish they knew more about such a beautiful subject.” (Michael Berg, MAA Reviews, October, 2012)

• , Department of Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

  John M. Lee

John M. Lee is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he regularly teaches graduate courses on the topology and geometry of manifolds. He was the recipient of the American Mathematical Society's Centennial Research Fellowship and he is the author of four previous Springer books: the first edition (2003) of Introduction to Smooth Manifolds, the first edition (2000) and second edition (2010) of Introduction to Topological Manifolds, and Riemannian Manifolds: An Introduction to Curvature (1997).

Policies and ethics