Hopf fibration (nonfiction)

The Hopf fibration can be visualized using a stereographic projection of S3 to R3 and then compressing R3 to a ball. This image shows points on S2 and their corresponding fibers with the same color.

In the mathematical field of topology, the Hopf fibration (also known as the Hopf bundle or Hopf map) describes a 3-sphere (a hypersphere in four-dimensional space) in terms of circles and an ordinary sphere.

Discovered by Heinz Hopf in 1931, it is an influential early example of a fiber bundle. Technically, Hopf found a many-to-one continuous function (or "map") from the 3-sphere onto the 2-sphere such that each distinct point of the 2-sphere comes from a distinct circle of the 3-sphere (Hopf 1931).

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Mathematics (nonfiction)

External links

• Hopf fibration @ Wikipedia