Thursday, 23 March 2017

Vector structure of the tangent plane

We know that the tangent plane TpS of S at p is a vector space of dimension 2. We ask here what is the vector structure of TpS. Indeed, let v,wTpS and let α,β:IS be two curves such that α(0)=β(0)=p and α(0)=v and β(0)=w. Since TpS is a vector space, then v+wTpS. We ask: 
Question. What is the curve on S whose tangent vector is v+w?
A first attempt would be α+β, because (α(t)+β(t)(0)=v+w. Of course, this is completely wrong because α(t)+β(t) is a curve in R3 which it is not included at S! To find the right curve γ:IS such that γ(0)=p and γ(0)=v+w we have to come back to the moment where we proved that TpS is a vector space. Recall that TpS=(dX)q(R2), q=X1(p),
where X is a parametrization around p, and (dX)q:R2R3 is the derivative of the map X:UR2R3. The above identity says us that v+w is the sum of two vectors in R2. Thus the idea to find γ is: first, compute the preimages of v and w, namely, ˉv, ˉw, compute ˉv+ˉw, then take a curve passing q with tangent vector ˉv+ˉw, and finally, consider the image of this curve by the parametrization X.

Let ˉα(t)=X1(α(t)), ˉβ(t)=X1(β(t)). Then  α(t)=X(ˉα(t)), β(t)=X(ˉβ(t)). Thus v=(dX)q(ˉα(0)), w=(dX)q(ˉβ(0)).
Here we obtain ˉv=ˉα(0) and ˉw=ˉβ(0). Consider ˉv+ˉw placed at q and consider a curve passing q with this tangent vector: if suffices σ:IU, σ(t)=q+t(ˉv+ˉw),
where it is immediate σ(0)=ˉv+ˉw.


Here we find the key of the vector structure of the tangent plane TpS: of course, we can not sum the curves α and β, neither the curves ˉα and ˉβ (in this case, outside of U). We take another curve that represents the (tangent) vector ˉv+ˉw. In this case, it is enough a straight-line and here we use strongly that U is an open set of R2, because at least around t=0, the straight-line  σ is included in U

The last steps are now easy. Consider γ(t)=X(σ(t)), which is a curve on S with γ(0)=X(σ(0))=X(q)=p. Then using the chain rule, we have γ(0)=(dX)σ(0)(σ(0))=(dX)q(ˉv+ˉw)=(dX)q(ˉv)+(dX)q(ˉw)=v+w.
Similarly, we can find the curve that represents the tangent vector λv, where λR.

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