Is $[0,1) \cup \{2\}$ a manifold with boundary? My issue is the $2$.

differential-geometrydifferential-topologygeneral-topologygeometrymanifolds

Personally I'd say $M$ wasn't a valid manifold with boundary because the $\{2\}$ doesn't have a neighborhood with any structure like an open ball/half-ball.

  • This is actually an exercise from An Introduction to Manifolds by Loring W. Tu and is not mentioned in an errata.

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  • I have spent almost 2 hours thinking about an exercise that looked like it would take only 15 minutes and even tried pasting lemma (it's a good thing Professor Tu has solutions unlike Professor Lee): The result of all that thinking is that I don't think $[0,1) \cup \{2\}$, $(\varepsilon,1) \cup \{2\}$ or $\{2\}$ is homeomorphic to any open subset of $\mathscr H^1$ or $\mathscr L^1$. I was able to show $\{0\} \subseteq \partial M$ and $(0,1)\subseteq M^0$, but I don't quite know where $2$ belongs. I believe $M$ is not locally $\mathscr H^1$.

  • Also, I have double checked: I believe "manifold boundary" was defined for manifolds with boundary, so this isn't some trick where "manifold boundary" is actually defined for a Hausdorff and second countable space that need not be locally $\mathscr H^n$.


To generalize,

Is a half-open interval and a point not in the interval's closure a manifold with boundary?

Best Answer

The subset $[0,1[ \cup \{2\}$ of the real line is a manifold with boundary having two connected components of different dimensions. The component $[0,1[$ is a 1-dimensional manifold with boundary, and the single point {2} is a 0-dimensional manifold.