The Sphere is not an Affine Space

affine-geometry

In Eric Gourgoulhon's "Special Relativity in General Frames", it is claimed that the two dimensional sphere is not an affine space. Where an affine space of dimension n on $\mathbb R$ is defined to be a non-empty set E such that there exists a vector space V of dimension n on $\mathbb R$ and a mapping

$\phi:E \times E \rightarrow V,\space\space\space
(A,B) \mapsto \phi(A,B)=:\vec {AB}$

that obeys the following properties:

(i) For any point O $\in E$, the function

$\phi_O: E \rightarrow V,\space\space\space
M \mapsto \vec {OM}$

is bijective.

(ii) For any triplet (A,B,C) of elements of E, the following relation holds:

$\vec {AB} + \vec {BC} = \vec {AC}.$

I would like to show that the sphere is not an affine space using this definition. My approach has been to assume that such a $\phi$ exists and then seek a contradiction. I can construct specific $\phi_O$'s that are bijective and I can show that a contradiction arises if I use the same construction centered at a new point A, wtih $\phi_A$, but this only invalidates the specific construction I made. I am having trouble generalizing this to any $\phi$.

Best Answer

The thing is, you might want to get some topology in the picture. In fact, if you do not, you can choose any bijection between the sphere and a $\mathbb R$-vector space, and you end up with a structure of vector space on your "sphere" (by transporting the structure). My point is, there exist such $\varphi$, but what you really want is not for $ \varphi_O$ to be only bijective : if your space already has a shape, you want it to be a homeomorphism.

And there is no homeomorphism between the sphere and a $\mathbb R$-vector space (for example because a vector space is contractible - you can shrink it continuously into a point - whereas the sphere is not ; you can look that up in any basic course of algebraic topology)

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