Is the boundary of a smooth manifold with boundary the countable union of smooth manifolds?

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Let $(\mathcal{M}, \mathcal{O}, \mathcal{A})$ be a smooth manifold with boundary, where $\mathcal{M}$ is a set, $\mathcal{O}$ is a topology and $\mathcal{A}$ is a smooth atlas. Under which conditions its boundary is the countable union of smooth manifolds?.

There exist a simple example where the boundary of a smooth manifold is not the countable union of smooth manifolds?

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This depends on the definition of manifold you are working with. If you look this up in Wikipedia you will see the requirement that a manifold, by definition, is second countable (has a countable base for it's topology). If you take over this requirement to the definition of a manifold with boundary, then this implies that the number of boundary components of a manifold with boundary is at most countable.

The requirement of second countability may be omitted. In appendix A of Spivaks "Comprehensive Indroduction to Differential Geometry", volume 1 (which is worth reading if you are interested in what may happen if you drop paracompactness from the definition), it is shown that the following requirements are equivalent for a manifold $M$ (which, in this appendix, is defined as a Hausdorff space which is locally homeomorphic to some Euclidean space):

  • each component of $M$ is $\sigma$ compact
  • each component of $M$ is second countable
  • $M$ is metrizable
  • $M$ is paracompact

So, quite obviously, if the number of components is uncountable (there is no reason why this should not be true with this definition), and if every component is a manifold with boundary, then the answer to your question is no.

Note: I'm a bit sloppy here with the destinction between manifold and manifold with boundary. The definition of manifold typically implies that the boundary -- in the sense of the definition of a manifold with boundary -- is empty. It should be clear, however, that the definition of a manifold with boundary carries over to both the cases where you assume that the manifold is second countable or not.