Definition topological manifold

differential-geometrymanifolds

In the book "An introduction to manifolds" by Tu, a topological manifold is defined to be a topological space $M$ that is Hausdorff, second countable and locally Euclidean.

Does this allow things like the disjoint union of a plane and a line? Then we have a component which is locally Euclidean of dimension $1$ and one of dimension $2$?

Best Answer

Tu allows manifolds having connected components of different dimensions. He explicitly says it in this post. Usually people talk about a space being "locally $\Bbb R^n$" or "locally Euclidean of dimension $n$" as opposed to just "locally Euclidean", as he does. But it is not hard to show that for each $n \geq 0$, the set $$\{ x \in M \mid x \mbox{ has an open neighborhood homeomorphic to }\Bbb R^n \}$$is both open and closed in $M$. So this means that the dimension is well defined on each connected component of $M$.