In geometry a hyperplane is a subspace of one dimension less than its ambient space. If a space is 3-dimensional then its hyperplanes are the 2-dimensional planes, while if the space is 2-dimensional, its hyperplanes are the 1-dimensional lines. This notion can be used in any general space in which the concept of the dimension of a subspace is defined.

In different settings, the objects which are hyperplanes may have different properties. For instance, a hyperplane of an n-dimensional affine space is a flat subset with dimension n − 1. By its nature, it separates the space into two half spaces. But a hyperplane of an n-dimensional projective space does not have this property.

Technical description

In geometry, a hyperplane of an n-dimensional space V is a subspace of dimension n − 1, or equivalently, of codimension 1 in V. The space V may be a Euclidean space or more generally an affine space, or a vector space or a projective space, and the notion of hyperplane varies correspondingly since the definition of subspace differs in these settings; in all cases however, any hyperplane can be given in coordinates as the solution of a single (due to the "codimension 1" constraint) algebraic equation of degree 1.