The idea of this note comes from the chapter , H. Hopf, W.K. Clifford, F. Klein written by H. Samelson in I.M. James’ book, History of Topology, and more precisely from the quoted letter from Hopf to Freudhental:
In case you are still interested in the question of the [homotopy] classes of maps of the 3-sphere
onto the 2-sphere
I want to tell you that I now can answer this question: there exist infinitely many classes. Namely there is a class invariant of the given map the counter image of
consists of finitely many simple closed oriented polygons
,
, …,
and likewise the counter image of
consists of polygons
,
, …,
. If
denotes the linking number of
and
, then
is independent of
and of the approximation and does not change under continuous change of the map. For every
there exists maps. Whether to every
there is only one map, I do not know. If the whole
is not covered by the image, then
is
. A consequence is that one cannot sweep the line elements on
continuously into a point.
Our aim is to developp this nice geometric argument following problems 13, 14 and 15 of Milnor’s book, Topology from differential viewpoint. Thus, our main result is:
Theorem: The group is infinite.
In fact, it may be proved that . As a consequence that
may be non-trivial when
is that the homotopy group is not determined by the CW complex structure, unlike homology and cohomology groups.
The first step is to define the linking number of two submanifolds of with total dimension
. For that purpose, we use degree theory; for more information, see Milnor’s book.
Definition: Let be a smooth map between two
-dimensional smooth compact oriented manifolds. If
is a regular point, let
be
if
is orientation-preserving and
otherwise. The degree of
with respect to a regular value
is defined by
.
Property 1: The degree does not depend on the regular value
.
In particular, property 1 allows us to define the degree of a smooth map
without reference to any regular value.
Property 2: If two smooth maps and
are smoothly homotopic, then
.
Property 3: Let ,
be two smooth manifolds and
be a smooth map. If there exists a smooth manifold
whose boundary is
and such that
extends to a smooth map
, then
.
Properties 1 and 2 are fundamental in degree theory; property 3 is a rather technical lemma used to prove the two previous properties, but it will be useful later.
Linking number:
Definition: Let be two submanifolds of total dimension
. The linking number
is defined as the degree of the linking map
.
Property 4: .
Proof. Let be the linking maps
and
,
and let for convenience
.
Then . It is an easy exercice to show that
when
is a diffeomorphism, and that
. So
.
Property 5: If bounds an oriented manifold disjoint from
, then
.
Proof. If is an oriented submanifold such that
, then the map
extends the linking map , and
, hence
according to property 3.
If and
are two knots in
, it is possible to compute
from a regular diagram.
More precisely, if and
is the plane normal to
, then the projection of
on
is a regular diagram
if
is a regular value of
; moreover,
is exactly the crossing points of
when
is over
. Therefore,
where
(resp.
) is the number of crossing points where
is orientation-preserving (resp. orientation-reversing); on
, such crossing points correspond respectively to
For example, the linking number computed on the following diagramm is two:
Before introducing Hopf invariant, let us mention some results about cobordism, needed in the sequel:
Some cobordism theory:
Definition: Two oriented compact manifolds are cobordant if there exists an oriented compact manifold
, called a cobordism, such that
where
denotes
with the reversed orientation.
Lemma 1: Let be a smooth map and
be a regular value. If
is a regular value sufficently close to
, then there exists a cobordism
between
and
.
Proof. If is the set of singular points of
,
is compact so there exists an open neighborhood
of
containing only regular values. Let
.
Let be a great circle from
to
, and let
be a rotation whose restriction to
is a rotation sending
to
. In particular, if
,
defines an isotopy between
and
. Let
.
Because ,
is a regular value of
and finally to
since
.
Thus, defines a cobordism between
and
.
Lemma 2: If are smoothly homotopic and
is a regular value for both, then there exists a cobordism
between
and
.
Proof. Let be a homotopy between
and
. Let
be a regular value of
close to
so that
and
, and
and
, are cobordant (using lemma 1). Then
defines a cobordism between
and
. Lemma 2 follows since cobordism is an equivalent relation.
Hopf invariant:
From now on, let be a smooth map and
be two regular values. Applying a stereographic projection, we may view
and
as submanifolds of
. Then the linking number
is well-defined.
Claim 1: The linking number does not depend on the stereographic projection.
Proof. A stereographic projection is an orientation-preserving diffeomorphism, so if and
are two stereographic projections, then
induces an orientation-preserving diffeomorphism between
and
, hence
.
Claim 2: The linking number is locally constant as a function of
.
Proof. Let the mapping maps
and
.
According to lemma 1, there exists a cobordism between
and
when
is close to
. Let
.
For convenience, let be the restriction of
on
, and
(resp.
) be the restriction of
on
(resp. on
). According to property 3,
.
If are the obvious diffeomorphisms
and
,
then (
), hence
.
But is orientation-preserving whereas
is not. Therefore,
.
Claim 3: If are regular values of
and
, then
.
Proof. Let be the homotopy
.
is well-defined since
implies
,
a contradiction. Therefore, and
are smoothly homotopic. Using lemma 2, we prove in the same way as for claim 2 that the degrees of the associated linking maps are equal so that
.
Property 6: The linking number depends only on the homotopy class of
.
Proof. According to claim 1, does not depend on the stereographic projection. According to claim 2 and property 4, the linking number does not depend on the regular values
and
by connectedness of
. Finally, if
is a smooth homotopy between
and
, then we deduce that
from claim 3 and property 4, taking a sequence satisfying
for all
.
Definition: We define the Hopf invariant of
as the linking number
for some regular values
.
We just showed that Hopf invariant is a homotopic invariant.
Property 7: If and
, then
.
Proof. Let be two regular values of
and
, and let
and
. The inclusions
induce an orientation-preserving diffeomorphism between
and
,
so, if , we have:
Hopf fibration:
The sphere can be viewed as the unit sphere
in
. Noticing that the intersection between
and any complexe line is a circle, we can say that
is covered by a family of circles
indexed by
.
More precisely, if then
belongs to the complex line
; to this line (in
) is associated the complex number
. Finally, if
denotes the diffeomorphism induced by the stereographic projection, we get a point
of the sphere
.
Definition: Hopf map induces the Hopf fibration
.
It is possible to visualize the decomposition of by circles in
using stereographic projection. It gives something like that, a decomposition in concentric torii each covered by their Villarceau circles:
Very nice animations about Hopf fibration can be found in Etienne Ghys, Joe Leys and Aurélien Alvarèz’s movie, Dimensions, and in Niles Johnson’s lecture, Visualizations of Hopf fibration. Now,
and
are two circles in . If
is the stereographic projection with respect to
, then
, so the previous circles become
and
.
In fact, it is just a Hopf link; precisely, if and
denotes the projections of the two previous circles on the plane
, that is
and
,
then where
is over
at one point, and vice-versa at the other. Therefore,
(be careful to the orientations!).
On the other hand, for every constant map
. Indeed, let
where is the unit two-dimensional disk viewed as a subspace of
; in particular, since
is contractible,
is homotopic to a constant map
and
. But the circles
and
(viewed in
thanks to the stereographic projection with respect to
) are clearly unlinked, hence
according to property 5.
Moreover, using property 7, we deduce that the applications
define a family of pairwise non-homotopic maps, since . We just proved our main theorem!
Hopf fibration in higher dimensions:
Hopf fibration is obtained using Hopf map
. But the same thing can be done by replacing
with any real division algebra, for example the quaternions
or the octonions
.
The associated maps and
induce respectively the Hopf fibrations
and
.
It can be shown (for example in Hatcher’s book, Algebraic topology, using a homological interpretation of Hopf invariant) that , hence:
Theorem: ,
and
are infinite.
However, Hopf fibrations do not exist in other dimensions since a finite-dimensional real division algebra has dimension one, two, four or eight.



Why do
and
have opposite orientations?
This follows from the definition of a cobordism:
is a copy of
and
a copy of
, ie., the orientation of
is reversed.
Thanks for your time to answer. See, I’m having trouble understanding why is that is your definition. Milnor just says the boundary
is the union of the two manifolds product
and
, without any regards to opposite orientation. Could you, please, explain where doe the minus sign come from?
There exist several cobordisms, and the one I am interested in is oriented cobordism. This is because fixing an orientation is necessary to define a degree. Maybe this question can help to understand why this is a good definition.