In mathematics, a hyperbolic manifold is a space where every point looks locally like hyperbolic space of some dimension.
This is a consequence of the uniformization theorem for surfaces and the geometrization theorem for 3-manifolds proved by Perelman.
Every complete, connected, simply-connected manifold of constant negative curvature
is isometric to the real hyperbolic space
As a result, the universal cover of any closed manifold
is a torsion-free discrete group of isometries on
Its thick–thin decomposition has a thin part consisting of tubular neighborhoods of closed geodesics and ends which are the product of a Euclidean (
The manifold is of finite volume if and only if its thick part is compact.
A simple non-trivial example, however, is the once-punctured torus.
This can be formed by taking an ideal rectangle in
– that is, a rectangle where the vertices are on the boundary at infinity, and thus don't exist in the resulting manifold – and identifying opposite images.
In a similar fashion, we can construct the thrice-punctured sphere, shown below, by gluing two ideal triangles together.
This also shows how to draw curves on the surface – the black line in the diagram becomes the closed curve when the green edges are glued together.
As we are working with a punctured sphere, the colored circles in the surface – including their boundaries – are not part of the surface, and hence are represented in the diagram as ideal vertices.
is a hyperbolic 3-manifold of finite volume.
-manifold is unique by Mostow rigidity and so geometric invariants are in fact topological invariants.
One of these geometric invariants used as a topological invariant is the hyperbolic volume of a knot or link complement, which can allow us to distinguish two knots from each other by studying the geometry of their respective manifolds.