Tuesday, 11 December 2007

at.algebraic topology - primitive of an exact differential form with special properties

I think, the answer can depend on how you interpret the question. Let me show that the answer is negative for one of the interpretations already in the case of 2-dimensional manifolds. We study the question locally in a neighbourhood of a vertex of a triangulation, so the condition on the integral over n-simplexes does not play any role. The obstruction for the existence of beta comes form the local behaviour of curves at a vertex.



Lemma. Let alpha=dxwedgedy on mathbbR2. For nge8 there exist gamma1,...,gamman, smooth rays on mathbbR2 that meet at 0 with different tangent vectors and such that there is no beta defined in any neighbourhood of 0 with dbeta=alpha and vanishing been restricted to gammai.



It is clear that this lemma implies the negative answer to a version of the question, when we are not allowed to deform the triangulation.



Proof of Lemma. Suppose by contradiction that beta exists. Then beta1=betafrac12(xdyydx) is a closed 1-form. So we can write beta1=dF, where F is a function defined in a neighbourhood of 0, F(0)=0. Since the number n of the rays is more than 2, dF should vanish at zero. Moreover, it is not hard to see, that since the number of rays is more than 4, the quadratic term of F vanishes at zero too.



Now, since beta vanishes on gammai, the restiction of beta1 to gammai equals frac12(ydxxdy). So we get the formula for F, resticted to gammai
F=frac12intgammaiydxxdy.
Now, we will chose the rays gamma1,...,gamma8. Namely gamma1(t)=(t,t2), gamma2(t)=(t,tt2), and take gamma3,...,gamma8 by consecutively rotating gamma1,gamma2 by pi/2, pi, 3pi/2.



It is not hard to see, that F is cubic modulo higher terms in t when it is restricted to gammai. At the same time F is positive on gamma1,gamma3,gamma5,gamma7 and negative restricted to other rays. So it changes its sign at lest 8 times on a little circle surrounding 0. This is impossible for a cubic Function (in a little neighbourhood the cubic term of F should be dominating). Contradiction.

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