Example of non-regular surface where neither partial derivative vanishes

85 Views Asked by At

For a surface in $\mathbb{R}^3$, if $(x,y,z) = \sigma(u,v)$ is one of its coordinate patches, the regularity requirement says that the partial derivative vectors $\frac{\partial \sigma}{\partial u}$ and $\frac{\partial \sigma}{\partial v}$ must be linearly independent.

The examples I've seen where a point on a surface "looks" irregular, like the apex of a cone, or the origin for the surface $(u^3, v^3, uv)$, all have at least one of these partial derivatives vanishing. Is there an accessible example in which both partials are nonzero, but they're parallel?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On

One most probably can come up with a much easier example. But as soon as I read your question this example came to my mind:

Let $N: \mathbb{R}^2 \rightarrow\mathbb{S}^2$ be the following parametrization: $$ N\,(u,v) = \left(\begin{array}{c} \tanh{(u + v)}\,\cos{({u-v})}\\ \tanh{(u + v)}\,\,\sin{({u-v})}\\ \frac{2\,(\cosh{(u+v)} + \sinh{(u+v)})}{1 + \cosh{(2u+2v)} + \sinh{(2u+2v)}} \end{array}\right), $$

At $(u,v) = (0,0)$ the tangents exist but both are parallel: $N_u (0,0) = N_v(0,0) = (1,0,0)$. The above parametrization above is sometimes referred to as the trivial Chebyshev net on the sphere (more accurately, it is just one of the members of a family of such nets).

Below you can find a Maple plot of it with the red arrow standing as both $N_u$ and $N_v$ at the point $N(0,0)$:

enter image description here