Tori in 4 dimensions are just nicer in general.
Re:Clifford torus
by virtuous_signal on Sunday January 19, 2020 @01:23PM
(#22092926)
>Tori in 4 dimensions are just nicer in general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_torus#Still_more_gene...
Torus (as in 2-dimensional torus) is nice in R^4, and in general the n-dimensional torus is nice in R^{2n}
The doughnut representation satisfies uniqueness everywhere, but isn't symmetric: the circles in the vertical direction are all the same size; but if you consider circles in the other direction, they depend on the angle; for instance circles at the top of the doughnut are bigger than the circle encircling the doughnut hole, and smaller than the circle encircling the entire doughnut. You can visualize how this asymmetry happens by turning the square into a doughnut: start with the square above; make it into a roll so that the left and right sides are identified, and then now bend the roll to identify the top and bottom edges: if you bent towards you, then the backside gets stretched a lot more than the front side on the way to forming the full doughnut.
Clifford torus is a way to satisfy both properties (symmetry and uniqueness) at the same time and it's a theorem that one needs to be in 4 dimensions for this to happen.