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When discussing connected sums of tori through the polygonal presentation of a torus, one finds the following claim that the two spaces in the image are homeomorphic. In all the presentations I have seen so far this claim is not proven. enter image description here

(The first space being what you get when you remove a disc from a torus.) Intuitively, it is pretty clear that the spaces are homeomorphic. I am not sure, however, how to convert the intuition into a proof. Of course, a proof would use the uniqueness of the quotient topology, but I am not sure how to rigorously find the maps that do this. So what does a rigorous proof look like?

(It seems I have accumulated a close vote for not providing context. Except I did provide context. This question comes up when finding the polygonal presentation of a connected sum of two tori. All the presentations I have seen of this skim over actually giving a proof that the spaces are homeomorphic. I am not sure what more is need for "context". Also I am not convinced that a proof by appealing to the classification theorem is a proof since a stronger version of this fact is used to prove the classification theorem.)

Of course, one can modify the loop $c$ to make it more manageable.

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    $\begingroup$ where'd you find that? they don't look homeomorphic to me. $\endgroup$ Commented 19 hours ago
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    $\begingroup$ @pyridoxal_trigeminus It is how one shows that the connected sum of two tori has polygonal presentation given by the word $aba^{-1}b^{-1}cdc^{-1}d^{-1}$. $\endgroup$ Commented 19 hours ago
  • $\begingroup$ Both pictures have euler characteristic -1 (only one vertex, one edge and one face) and also one boundary component, and thus, they have the same genus because $2g-2-b=\chi$. So, they are homeomorphic by the classification theorem: two compact surfaces with boundary are homeomorphic iff they have the same genus and the same number of boundary components. $\endgroup$ Commented 19 hours ago
  • $\begingroup$ This fact is used to prove the classification theorem @user392559 $\endgroup$ Commented 19 hours ago
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, I was just pointing out that they are indeed homeomorphic because of this. So, if you want a constructive proof, this is equivalent to proving that $[0,1] \times [0,1] - D$ (where $D$ is an open disc) is homeomorphic to the pentagon of the second picture in a way that descends to the quotient space, which is true because all of the vertices of the pentagon of the second picture are the same after the identification. $\endgroup$ Commented 19 hours ago

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Before making the identifications, consider the following triangulations in the Euclidean plane, and the simplicial map given by the labelling:

simplicial map between polygons

Call this map $f\colon X \to Y$, where the numbered vertices are mapped as $f(v_i) = v_i'$ for $1\leq i\leq 7$, each edge $\overline{v_i v_j}$ is mapped as $f(\alpha v_i + \beta v_j) = \alpha v_i' + \beta v_j'$ for any $\alpha + \beta = 1$ with $\alpha, \beta \geq 0$ and each triangle $\triangle v_i v_j v_k$ is mapped as $f(\alpha v_i + \beta v_j + \gamma v_k) = \alpha v_i' + \beta v_j' + \gamma v_k'$ for $\alpha + \beta + \gamma = 1$ with $\alpha, \beta, \gamma \geq 0$. This is just mapping barycentric coordinates in each triangle in $X$ to the corresponding barycentric coordinates of the corresponding triangle in $Y$. This is continuous by the pasting lemma, and each $y\in Y$ has singleton preimage $f^{-1}(y)$, except $f(v_1) = v_1' = v_5' = f(v_5)$.

Now your arrows define some equivalence relation $\sim$ on the left diagram and some equivalence relation $\sim'$ on the right diagram. We have quotient maps $\pi \colon X \to X/\sim$ and $\pi'\colon Y \to Y/\sim'$.

Define $F \colon X/\sim \to Y/\sim'$ by $F(\pi(x)) := \pi'(f(x))$. To show that this is well-defined, we need to show that if $\pi(x_1) = \pi(x_2)$ then $\pi'(f(x_1)) = \pi'(f(x_2))$. Said differently, we need to show that if $x_1 \sim x_2$ then $f(x_1) \sim' f(x_2)$. This is easily verified: however you're defining what such a diagram even is, every identification made on the left is also an identification made between corresponding points on the right. By the universal property of the quotient topology $X/\sim$, we know $F$ is continuous ($F$ is characterized by $F \circ \pi = \pi' \circ f$).

$F$ is surjective because $f$ is surjective: each $\pi'(y) \in Y/\sim'$ has some $x\in f^{-1}(y)$, so $\pi'(y) = \pi'(f(x)) = F(\pi(x)) \in \operatorname{Image}(F)$.

We can also show $F$ is injective. Suppose $F(\pi(x_1))=F(\pi(x_2))$. So $\pi'(f(x_1))=\pi'(f(x_2))$, and so $f(x_1) \sim' f(x_2)$. We need to show that $\pi(x_1) = \pi(x_2)$, i.e., that $x_1 \sim x_2$.

  • If $f(x_1) \in Y^\circ$ then since $f(x_1) \sim' f(x_2)$ we must have that $f(x_2) \in Y^\circ$ as well. Since $\sim'$ is trivial on $Y^\circ$ we must have $f(x_1)=f(x_2)$. And since $f$ is injective on $f^{-1}(Y^\circ) = X^\circ$, we must then have $x_1 = x_2$.
  • If $f(x_1) \in \{v_1', \dots, v_5'\}$ then since $f(x_1) \sim' f(x_2)$ we must have that $f(x_2) \in \{v_1',\dots, v_5'\}$ as well. But then $x_1$ and $x_2$ must belong to $\{v_1, \dots, v_5\}$, all of which are identified in $X/\sim$.
  • If $f(x_1)$ belongs your open edge "$c$" in $Y$, then since $\sim'$ is trivial on the open edge $c$, we know $f(x_1) = f(x_2)$, and since $f$ restricts to a bijection between the open edge $c$ in $X$ and that of $Y$, we conclude that $x_1=x_2$.
  • If $f(x_1)$ belongs to some open edge labelled $a$ or $b$ in $Y$, then $f(x_2)$ must be one of the two points related by $\sim'$. Each has a unique preimage $x_2$ under $f$, but both possible preimages are related by $\sim$ by construction, so $x_1\sim x_2$. In other words, on the open edges labelled $a$ or $b$, $f$ restricts to a bijection that maps $\sim$ to $\sim'$.

So we can conclude that $F$ is a bijection. The domain $X/\sim$ is compact because $X$ is compact, so if we can show that $Y$ is Hausdorff then we can conclude that $F$ is a homeomorphism. $Y$ is indeed Hausdorff by more casework:

  • Points in $Y^\circ/\sim'$ are separated by open sets because the corresponding points $Y^\circ$ are separated by open sets, and $\pi'$ is open on $Y^\circ$.
  • Any point in $Y^\circ/\sim'$ is separated from any point in $\partial Y/\sim'$ because we can take a small closed neighborhood, away from $\partial Y$, of a point in $Y^\circ$, along with an open subneighborhood, and then these map to such closed and open neighborhoods of in $Y/\sim'$, so the complement of the closed neighborhood is an open neighborhood of $\partial Y/\sim'$ disjoint from the open neighborhood of the given point.
  • Points in differently-labelled open edges of $\partial Y$ can be separated by open sets in $\partial Y/\sim'$ because we can take thin triangular neighborhoods around each edge in $Y$, which will get mapped to open neighborhoods of each open edge in $Y/\sim'$
  • Points within an open edge can be separated by open sets because if one point has parameter $t_1\in[0,1]$ along the edge and the other has parameter $t_2$, then take $\epsilon = \min\left(\frac{|t_1-t_2|}{2}, t_1, t_2, 1-t_1, 1-t_2\right)$ and form small $\epsilon$ balls around the two points, intersected with the thin triangles from before just to be safe. Since the parameterizations agree in the quotient, these are disjoint open sets.
  • Vertices in $Y\sim'$ can be separated from any other point by choosing sufficiently small balls around all vertices in $Y$ at once.

You can fill in as many more details as your heart desires. Much of this could probably also be packaged into more general purpose lemmas depending on exactly what your use case is.

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    $\begingroup$ This is very nice. I think it may be simpler to note that $\pi’\circ f$ is a quotient map and then conclude using the uniqueness of the quotient topology. $\endgroup$ Commented 8 hours ago

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