In differential geometry the defining characteristic of a tangent space is that it approximates the smooth manifold to first order near the point of tangency. Equivalently, if we zoom in more and more at the point of tangency the manifold appears to become more and more straight, asymptotically tending to approach the tangent space. This turns out to be the correct point of view in geometric measure theory.
Definition. Let be a set that is measurablewith respect tom-dimensional Hausdorff measure, and such that the restriction measure is a Radon measure. We say that an m-dimensional subspace is the approximate tangent space to at a certain point, denoted, if in the sense of Radon measures. Here for any measure we denote by the rescaled and translated measure: Certainly any classical tangent space to a smooth submanifold is an approximate tangent space, but the converse is not necessarily true.
Multiplicities
The parabola is a smooth 1-dimensional submanifold. Its tangent space at the origin is the horizontal line. On the other hand, if we incorporate the reflection along the x-axis: then is no longer a smooth 1-dimensional submanifold, and there is no classical tangent space at the origin. On the other hand, by zooming in at the origin the set is approximately equal to two straight lines that overlap in the limit. It would be reasonable to say it has an approximate tangent space with multiplicity two.
Definition for measures
One can generalize the previous definition and proceed to define approximate tangent spaces for certain Radon measures, allowing for multiplicities as explained in the section above. Definition. Let be a Radon measure on. We say that an m-dimensional subspace is the approximate tangent space to at a point with multiplicity, denoted with multiplicity, if in the sense of Radon measures. The right-hand side is a constant multiple of m-dimensional Hausdorff measure restricted to. This definition generalizes the one for sets as one can see by taking for any as in that section. It also accounts for the reflected paraboloid example above because for we have with multiplicity two.
The notion of approximate tangent spaces is very closely related to that of rectifiable sets. Loosely speaking, rectifiable sets are precisely those for which approximate tangent spaces exist almost everywhere. The following lemma encapsulates this relationship: Lemma. Let be measurable with respect to m-dimensional Hausdorff measure. Then is m-rectifiable if and only ifthere exists a positive locally -integrable function such that the Radon measure has approximate tangent spaces for -almost every.
