Differential geometry. Basic notions and physical examples (Q2452697)

The book under review is the outgrowth of lecture notes for a mini-course delivered at the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) workshop on differential geometry and continuum mechanics in 2013 (Edinburgh, UK). It provides a comprehensive description of the geometric constructs that form the backbone of modern differential geometry. It also demonstrates the close correspondence between geometrical objects and physically meaningful counterparts in engineering and physics. The treatment is not overly technical from the mathematical point of view, thus allowing for a comfortable mastery of the essential ideas. The author starts with an introduction to purely topological concepts and structures such as topological spaces, manifolds, groups, fiber bundles and groupoids and then proceeds to the notion of differentiability and various differential constructs such as differentiable manifolds, tangent bundles, fibre bundles, etc. The first chapter starts with the definition of topological spaces and the concepts of nearness and continuity and extends to topological manifolds, groups, fiber bundles and topological groupoids. In Chapter 2, Epstein goes over to physical illustrations by first considering the configuration space of mechanical systems, while local symmetries of constitutive laws are briefly examined in the context of group theory. For spacetime, the Aristotelian, Galilean, and relativistic forms are also briefly presented. The concept of microstructure is also presented. The second chapter ends with a presentation of the use of groupoids in mechanics of materials. Chapter 3 assures the transition from topological to differential considerations. The first section of this chapter considers differentiable manifolds followed up by the notions of the tangent bundle of a manifold. Vector fields and flows, principal frame and its associated bundles are also introduced, while exterior algebra, interior multiplication, non-canonical isomorphisms, tensor bundles, volume forms and pull backs end this section. In the same section, the author introduces the calculus of differential forms and this part contains a nice presentation of the notion of exterior derivative. The concept of integration on manifolds and de Rham currents, Lie derivative and Lie groups, distributions and connections end the chapter. The book ends with a chapter which is devoted to physical illustrations, by introducing the context of mechanics in the configuration space, virtual displacements, force fields, and the Lagrangian equations of motion followed up by the Hamiltonian systems which are introduced via symplectic manifolds. The book does not have any solved examples or unsolved exercises and references contain some basic textbooks. Few seminal papers are suggested at the end of each chapter.