An Introduction to Differential Geometry: The Theory of Surfaces

Abstract

From a mathematical perspective, a surface is a generalization of a plane which does not necessarily require being flat, that is, the curvature is not necessarily zero. Often, a surface is defined by equations that are satisfied by some coordinates of its points. A surface may also be defined as the image, in some space of dimensions at least three, of a continuous function of two variables (some further conditions are required to insure that the image is not a curve). In this case, one says that one has a parametric surface, which is parametrized by these two variables, called parameters. Parametric equations of surfaces are often irregular at some points. This is formalized by the concept of manifold: in the context of manifolds, typically in topology and differential geometry, a surface is a manifold of dimension two; this means that a surface is a topological space such that every point has a neighborhood which is homeomorphic to an open subset of the Euclidean plane. A parametric surface is the image of an open subset of the Euclidean plane by a continuous function, in a topological space, generally a Euclidean space of dimension at least three. The paper aims at giving an introduction to the theory of surfaces from differential geometry perspective.