Let be a pseudo-Riemannian manifold. For any smooth function the metric is said to be conformal or conformally related to .
Let a smooth map from to another Riemannian manifold . If the Riemannian metric induced on is conformal to the original , then is called a conformal mapping of to .
Under a conformal mapping the angle between two vectors is preserved.
A Riemannian manifold is said to be conformally flat if for every point there exists a neighbourhood and a conformal map from it to with the standard metric. In the case of surfaces, it is always the case due to the existence of isothermal coordinates.