Flat (geometry)

In geometry, a flat or Euclidean subspace is a subset of a Euclidean space that is itself a Euclidean space (of lower dimension). The flats in two-dimensional space are points and lines, and the flats in three-dimensional space are points, lines, and planes.

"Euclidean subspace" redirects here. For a subspace that contains the zero vector or a fixed origin, see Linear subspace.

In a n-dimensional space, there are flats of every dimension from 0 to n − 1;[1] flats of dimension n − 1 are called hyperplanes.

Flats are the affine subspaces of Euclidean spaces, which means that they are similar to linear subspaces, except that they need not pass through the origin. Flats occur in linear algebra, as geometric realizations of solution sets of systems of linear equations.

A flat is a manifold and an algebraic variety, and is sometimes called a linear manifold or linear variety to distinguish it from other manifolds or varieties.

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