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In mathematics, the n-sphere is the generalization of the ordinary sphere to spaces of arbitrary dimension. It is an n-dimensional manifold that can be embedded in Euclidean (n + 1)-space.
Contents
- Description
- Euclidean coordinates in n 1 space
- Topological description
- Volume and surface area
- Examples
- Recurrences
- Closed forms
- Other relations
- Spherical coordinates
- Spherical volume element
- Stereographic projection
- Uniformly at random from the n1 sphere
- Alternatives
- Uniformly at random from the n ball
- Specific spheres
- References
For any natural number n, an n-sphere of radius r may be defined in terms of an embedding in (n + 1)-dimensional Euclidean space as the set of points that are at distance r from a central point, where the radius r may be any positive real number. Thus, the n-sphere would be defined by:
In particular:
the pair of points at the ends of a (one-dimensional) line segment is 0-sphere, the circle, which is the one-dimensional circumference of a (two-dimensional) disk in the plane is a 1-sphere, the two-dimensional surface of a (three-dimensional) ball in three-dimensional space is a 2-sphere, often simply called a sphere, the three-dimensional boundary of a (four-dimensional) 4-ball in four-dimensional Euclidean is a 3-sphere, also known as a glome.An n-sphere embedded in an (n + 1)-dimensional Euclidean space is called a hypersphere. The n-sphere of unit radius is called the unit n-sphere, denoted Sn. The unit n-sphere is often referred to as the n-sphere.
When embedded as described, an n-sphere is the surface or boundary of an (n + 1)-dimensional ball. For n ≥ 2, the n-spheres are the simply connected n-dimensional manifolds of constant, positive curvature. The n-spheres admit several other topological descriptions: for example, they can be constructed by gluing two n-dimensional Euclidean spaces together, by identifying the boundary of an n-cube with a point, or (inductively) by forming the suspension of an (n − 1)-sphere.
Description
For any natural number n, an n-sphere of radius r is defined as the set of points in (n + 1)-dimensional Euclidean space that are at distance r from some fixed point c, where r may be any positive real number and where c may be any point in (n + 1)-dimensional space. In particular:
Euclidean coordinates in (n + 1)-space
The set of points in (n + 1)-space: (x1,x2,…,xn+1) that define an n-sphere (Sn), is represented by the equation:
where c is a center point, and r is the radius.
The above n-sphere exists in (n + 1)-dimensional Euclidean space and is an example of an n-manifold. The ppl volume form ω of an n-sphere of radius r is given by
where * is the Hodge star operator; see Flanders (1989, §6.1) for a discussion and proof of this formula in the case r = 1. As a result,
The space enclosed by an n-sphere is called an (n + 1)-ball. An (n + 1)-ball is closed if it includes the n-sphere, and it is open if it does not include the n-sphere.
Specifically:
Topological description
Topologically, an n-sphere can be constructed as a one-point compactification of n-dimensional Euclidean space. Briefly, the n-sphere can be described as
Volume and surface area
In general, the volumes of the n-ball in n-dimensional Euclidean space, and the n-sphere in (n + 1)-dimensional Euclidean, of radius R, are proportional to the nth power of the radius, R. We write
Interestingly, given the radius R, the volume and the surface area of the n-sphere reaches a maximum and then decrease towards zero as the dimension n increases. In particular, the volume
Examples
The 0-ball consists of a single point. The 0-dimensional Hausdorff measure is the number of points in a set, so
The unit 1-ball is the interval
The 0-sphere consists of its two end-points,
The unit 1-sphere is the unit circle in the Euclidean plane, and this has circumference (1-dimensional measure)
The region enclosed by the unit 1-sphere is the 2-ball, or unit disc, and this has area (2-dimensional measure)
Analogously, in 3-dimensional Euclidean space, the surface area (2-dimensional measure) of the unit 2-sphere is given by
and the volume enclosed is the volume (3-dimensional measure) of the unit 3-ball, given by
Recurrences
The surface area, or properly the n-dimensional volume, of the n-sphere at the boundary of the (n + 1)-ball of radius
or, equivalently, representing the unit n-ball as a union of concentric (n − 1)-sphere shells,
So,
We can also represent the unit (n + 2)-sphere as a union of tori, each the product of a circle (1-sphere) with an n-sphere. Let
Since
This completes our derivation of the recurrences:
Closed forms
Combining the recurrences, we see that
where
In general, the volume, in n-dimensional Euclidean space, of the unit n-ball, is given by
where
By multiplying
Other relations
The recurrences can be combined to give a "reverse-direction" recurrence relation for surface area, as depicted in the diagram:
Index-shifting n to n − 2 then yields the recurrence relations:
where S0 = 2, V1 = 2, S1 = 2π and V2 = π.
The recurrence relation for
Spherical coordinates
We may define a coordinate system in an n-dimensional Euclidean space which is analogous to the spherical coordinate system defined for 3-dimensional Euclidean space, in which the coordinates consist of a radial coordinate,
Except in the special cases described below, the inverse transformation is unique:
where if
There are some special cases where the inverse transform is not unique;
Spherical volume element
Expressing the angular measures in radians, the volume element in n-dimensional Euclidean space will be found from the Jacobian of the transformation:
and the above equation for the volume of the n-ball can be recovered by integrating:
The volume element of the (n-1)–sphere, which generalizes the area element of the 2-sphere, is given by
The natural choice of an orthogonal basis over the angular coordinates is a product of ultraspherical polynomials,
for j = 1, 2, ..., n − 2, and the e isφj for the angle j = n − 1 in concordance with the spherical harmonics.
Stereographic projection
Just as a two-dimensional sphere embedded in three dimensions can be mapped onto a two-dimensional plane by a stereographic projection, an n-sphere can be mapped onto an n-dimensional hyperplane by the n-dimensional version of the stereographic projection. For example, the point
Likewise, the stereographic projection of an n-sphere
Uniformly at random from the (n − 1)-sphere
To generate uniformly distributed random points on the (n − 1)-sphere (i.e., the surface of the n-ball), Marsaglia (1972) gives the following algorithm.
Generate an n-dimensional vector of normal deviates (it suffices to use N(0, 1), although in fact the choice of the variance is arbitrary),
Now calculate the "radius" of this point,
The vector
Examples
For example, when n = 2 the normal distribution exp(−x12) when expanded over another axis exp(−x22) after multiplication takes the form exp(−x12−x22) or exp(−r2) and so is only dependent on distance from the origin.
Alternatives
Another way to generate a random distribution on a hypersphere is to make a uniform distribution over a hypercube that includes the unit hyperball, exclude those points that are outside the hyperball, then project the remaining interior points outward from the origin onto the surface. This will give a uniform distribution, but it is necessary to remove the exterior points. As the relative volume of the hyperball to the hypercube decreases very rapidly with dimension, this procedure will succeed with high probability only for fairly small numbers of dimensions.
Wendel's theorem gives the probability that all of the points generated will lie in the same half of the hypersphere.
Uniformly at random from the n-ball
Points may be sampled uniformly from the n-ball by a reduction to the (n - 1)-sphere. With a point selected from the (n - 1)-sphere uniformly at random (e.g., by using Marsaglia's algorithm), one needs only a radius to obtain a point uniformly at random within the n-ball. If u is a number generated uniformly at random from the interval [0, 1] and x is a point selected uniformly at random from the (n - 1)-shere then u1/nx is uniformly distributed over the unit n-ball.
Points may also be sampled uniformly from the n-ball by a reduction to the (n + 1)-sphere. In particular, if