# Compactification of Manifolds

It is known that for any locally compact Hausdorff space X, we can define a Hausdorff one-point compactification containing X. In the case of the (differentiable) manifold $\mathbb R^n$ this one-point compactification turns out to be (homeomorphic to) $\mathbb S^n$, which is again a (differentiable) manifold.

This leads to the following question:

What does the picture look like in the general case for compactifications of an arbitrary manifold $M$?

Although the one-point compactification of $M$ is not a manifold in general (e.g. $\mathbb R^n - 0$); is it possible to view every manifold as an open (dense?) subset of a compact manifold by taking some other kind of compactification? In the differentiable case? In the $C^0$-case?

I had thought along the following lines at first: By the Whitney embedding theorem, every manifold $M$ can be thought of as a closed submanifold of $\mathbb R^n$ for some $n$. And by embedding $\mathbb R^n$ into $\mathbb S^n$, we can think of $M$ as an embedded submanifold of a compact manifold. But I guess taking the closure of $M$ in $\mathbb S^n$ will not in general leave us with a manifold anymore (?), so this does not answer my question...

Has this been looked into?

Thanks for any thoughts.

S.L.

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Thanks for these two links. Although the answers are definitely over my head, this should settle my question (for now). –  Sam Nov 22 '10 at 19:46
How about the density curve on the torus?The dimension will change,is it compactification? –  Strongart Apr 26 '11 at 10:55

(2). If you want a connected example, then it first appears in dimension 2: If a connected surface $S$ has infinite genus then it is not homeomorphic to an open subset of a compact surface. This is intuitively clear, but I will nevertheless give a proof which works in all dimensions.
Since $S$ has infinite genus, the image of the natural map $$\phi: H^1_c(S; {\mathbb R})\to H^1(S; {\mathbb R})$$ has infinite rank (each "handle" in $S$ contributes a 2-dimensional subspace). Suppose that $S\to T$ is an open embedding of $S$ to a compact surface $T$. Then we have the commutative diagram $$\begin{array}{ccc} H^1_c(S; {\mathbb R}) & \stackrel{\phi}{\to} & H^1(S; {\mathbb R})\\ \psi\downarrow & ~ & \eta\uparrow \\ H^1_c(T; {\mathbb R}) & \stackrel{\cong}{\to} & H^1(T; {\mathbb R}) \end{array}$$
(Note that the induced maps of ordinary and of compactly supported cohomology groups go in opposite directions, this is what used in the proof.) Since $H^1(T, {\mathbb R})$ is finite-dimensional, the image of $\eta\circ \psi$ is also finite-dimensional, which is a contradiction.