A building is a simplicial complex with a covering by Coxeter complexes (called apartments) satisfying certain combinatorial conditions. A building whose apartments are spherical (respectively Euclidean) Coxeter complexes has a natural piecewise spherical (respectively Euclidean) metric with nice geometric properties. We show that spherical and Euclidean buildings are completely characterized by some simple, geometric properties.
In this paper we define $q$-spherical surfaces as the surfaces that contain the absolute conic of the Euclidean space as a $q-$fold curve. Particular attention is paid to the surfaces with singular points of the highest order. Two classes of such surfaces, with one and two $n-$fold points, are discussed in detail. We study their properties, give their algebraic equations and visualize them with the program {\it Mathematica}.
In this note we introduce the problem of illumination of convex bodies in spherical spaces and solve it for a large subfamily of convex bodies. We derive from it a combinatorial version of the classical illumination problem for convex bodies in Euclidean spaces as well as a solution to that for a large subfamily of convex bodies, which in dimension three leads to special Koebe polyhedra.
A unit spherical Euclidean distance matrix (EDM) D is a matrix whose entries can be realized as the interpoint (squared) Euclidean distances of n points on a unit sphere. In this paper, given such a D and 1 \leq k < l \leq n, we present a characterization of the set of all unit spherical EDMs whose entries agree with those of D except possibly with the entry in the klth and lkth positions. As a result, we show that this set can be discrete, consisting of one or two elements, or it can be continuous. The results are derived using two alternative approaches, the second of which is based on Cayle…
This is a survey of metric properties of non-Euclidean conics, mainly based on works of Chasles and Story. A spherical conic is the intersection of the sphere with a quadratic cone; similarly, a hyperbolic conic is the intersection of the Beltrami-Cayley-Klein disk with an affine conic. Non-Euclidean conics have metric properties similar to those of Euclidean conics, and even more due to the polarity that works here better than in the Euclidean plane.
The recently introduced variation of the game of cops and robber is played on geodesic spaces. In this paper we establish some general strategies for the players, in particular the generalized radial strategy and the covering space strategy. Those strategies are then applied to the game on the $n$-dimensional ball, the sphere, and the torus.
We prove generalized lower Ricci bounds for Euclidean and spherical cones over complete Riemannian manifolds. These cones are regarded as complete metric measure spaces. In general, they will be neither manifolds nor Alexandrov spaces. We show that the Euclidean cone over an n-dimensional Riemannian manifold whose Ricci curvature is bounded from below by n-1 satisfies the curvature-dimension condition CD(0; n+1) and that the spherical cone over the same manifold fulfills the curvature-dimension condition CD(n; n+1). More generally, for each N > 1 we prove that the condition CD(N-1;N) for a wei…
We prove an affine analog of Scharlau's reduction theorem for spherical buildings. To be a bit more precise let $X$ be a euclidean building with spherical building $\partial X$ at infinity. Then there exists a euclidean building $\bar X$ such that $X$ splits as a product of $\bar X$ with some euclidean $k$-space such that $\partial \bar X$ is the thick reduction of $\partial X$ in the sense of Scharlau. \newline In addition we prove a converse statement saying that an embedding of a thick spherical building at infinity extends to an embedding of the euclidean building having the extended spher…
In this paper we consider the effect of symmetry on the rigidity of bar-joint frameworks, spherical frameworks and point-hyperplane frameworks in $\mathbb{R}^d$. In particular we show that, under forced or incidental symmetry, infinitesimal rigidity for spherical frameworks with vertices in $X$ on the equator and point-hyperplane frameworks with the vertices in $X$ representing hyperplanes are equivalent. We then show, again under forced or incidental symmetry, that infinitesimal rigidity properties under certain symmetry groups can be paired, or clustered, under inversion on the sphere so tha…
We introduce a notion of the Euclidean- and the Minkowski rank for arbitrary metric spaces and we study their behaviour with respect to products. We show that the Minkowski rank is additive with respect to metric products, while additivity of the Euclidean rank only holds under additional assumptions, e.g. for Riemannian manifolds. We also study products with nonstandard product metrics.
We give a metric characterization of snowflakes of Euclidean spaces. Namely, a metric space is isometric to $\mathbb R^n$ equipped with a distance $(d_{\rm E})^ε$, for some $n\in \mathbb N_0$ and $ε\in (0,1]$, where $d_{\rm E}$ is the Euclidean distance, if and only if it is locally compact, $2$-point isometrically homogeneous, and admits dilations of any factor.
The goal of this paper is to introduce and study analogues of the Euclidean Funk and Hilbert metrics on open convex subsets $Ω$ of hyperbolic or spherical spaces. At least at a formal level, there are striking similarities among the three cases: Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic. We start by defining non-Euclidean analogues of the Euclidean Funk weak metric and we give three distinct representations of it in each of the non-Euclidean cases, which parallel the known situation for the Euclidean case. As a consequence, all of these metrics are shown to be Finslerian, and the associated norms of…
The aim of this paper is to prove isoperimetric inequalities for simplices and polytopes with $d+2$ vertices in Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic $d$-space. In particular, we find the minimal volume $d$-dimensional hyperbolic simplices and spherical tetrahedra of a given inradius. Furthermore, we investigate the properties of maximal volume spherical and hyperbolic polytopes with $d+2$ vertices with a given circumradius, and the hyperbolic polytopes with $d+2$ vertices with a given inradius and having a minimal volume or minimal total edge length. Finally, for any $1 \leq k \leq d$, we inves…
A weak metric on a set is a function that satisfies the axioms of a metric except the symmetry and the separation axioms. In the present paper we introduced a weak metric, called the Apollonian weak metric, on any subset of a Euclidean space which is either bounded or whose boundary is unbounded. We then relate this weak metric to some familiar metrics such as the Poincare metric, the Klein-Hilbert metric, Funk metric, and the part metric which play an important role in classic and recent work on geometric function theory.
Suppose that a metric space $X$ is the union of two metric subspaces $A$ and $B$ that embed into Euclidean space with distortions $D_A$ and $D_B$, respectively. We prove that then $X$ embeds into Euclidean space with a bounded distortion (namely, with distortion at most $7D_A D_B + 2(D_A+D_B)$). Our result settles an open problem posed by Naor. Additionally, we present some corollaries and extensions of this result. In particular, we introduce and study a new concept of an "external bi-Lipschitz extension". In the end of the paper, we list a few related open problems.
Every graph G can be embedded in a Euclidean space as a two-distance set. The Euclidean representation number of G is the smallest dimension in which G is representable by such an embedding. We consider spherical and J-spherical representation numbers of G and give exact formulas for these numbers using multiplicities of polynomials that are defined by the Caley-Menger determinant. One of the main results of the paper are explicit formulas for the representation numbers of the join of graphs which are obtained from W. Kuperberg's type theorem for two-distance sets.
The calculation of volumes of polyhedra in the three-dimensional Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic spaces is very old and difficult problem. In particular, an elementary formula for volume of non-euclidean simplex is still unknown. One of the simplest polyhedra is the Lambert cube Q(α,β,γ). By definition, Q(α,β,γ) is a combinatorial cube, with dihedral angles α,βand γassigned to the three mutually non-coplanar edges and right angles to the remaining. The hyperbolic volume of Lambert cube was found by Ruth Kellerhals (1989) in terms of the Lobachevsky function Λ(x). In the present paper the s…
It is well known that the vertices of any Euclidean simplicial regular polytope determine an optimal packing of equal spherical balls. We prove a stability version of optimal order of this result.
In this paper we prove an isoperimetric inequality of euclidean type for complete metric spaces admitting a cone-type inequality. These include all Banach spaces and all complete, simply-connected metric spaces of non-positive curvature in the sense of Alexandrov or, more generally, of Busemann. The main theorem generalizes results of Gromov and Ambrosio-Kirchheim.
We prove that a metric measure space equipped with a Dirichlet form admitting an Euclidean heat kernel is necessarily isometric to the Euclidean space. This helps us providing an alternative proof of Colding's celebrated almost rigidity volume theorem via a quantitative version of our main result. We also discuss the case of a metric measure space equipped with a Dirichlet form admitting a spherical heat kernel.
We show that for all $n \geq 2$, there exists a doubling linearly locally contractible metric space $X$ that is topologically a $n$-sphere such that every weak tangent is isometric to $\R^n$ but $X$ is not quasisymmetrically equivalent to the standard $n$-sphere. The same example shows that $2$-Ahlfors regularity in Theorem 1.1 of \cite{BK02} on quasisymmetric uniformization of metric $2$-spheres is optimal.
Spherical localisation is a technique whose history goes back to M.Gromov and V.Milman. It's counterpart, the Euclidean localisation is extensively studied and has been put to great use in various branches of mathematics. The purpose of this paper is to quickly introduce spherical localisation, as well as demonstrate some of its applications in convex and metric geometry.
In the setting of metric measure spaces satisfying the doubling condition and the $(1,p)$-Poincaré inequality, we prove a metric analogue of the Bourgain-Brezis-Mironescu formula for functions in the Sobolev space $W^{1,p}(X,d,ν)$, under the assumption that for $ν$-a.e. point the tangent space in the Gromov-Hausdorff sense is Euclidean with fixed dimension $N$.
We review and comment on some works of Euler and his followers on spherical geometry. We start by presenting some memoirs of Euler on spherical trigonometry. We comment on Euler's use of the methods of the calculus of variations in spherical trigonometry. We then survey a series of geometrical resuls, where the stress is on the analogy between the results in spherical geometry and the corresponding results in Euclidean geometry. We elaborate on two such results. The first one, known as Lexell's Theorem (Lexell was a student of Euler), concerns the locus of the vertices of a spherical triangle …
This paper is devoted to the study of quotients of finite metric spaces. The basic type of question we ask is: Given a finite metric space M, what is the largest quotient of (a subset of) M which well embeds into Hilbert space. We obtain asymptotically tight bounds for these questions, and prove that they exhibit phase transitions. We also study the analogous problem for embedings into l_p, and the particular case of the hypercube.
The spherical centroid body of a centrally-symmetric convex body in the Euclidean unit sphere is introduced. Two alternative definitions - one geometric, the other probabilistic in nature - are given and shown to lead to the same objects. The geometric approach is then used to establish a number of basic properties of spherical centroid bodies, while the probabilistic approach inspires the proof of a spherical analogue of the classical polar Busemann-Petty centroid inequality.
We extend the results of B. Minemyer by showing that any indefinite metric polyhedron (either compact or not) with the vertex degree bounded from above admits an isometric simplicial embedding into a Minkowski space of the lowest possible dimension. We provide a simple algorithm of constructing such embeddings. We also show that every partial simplicial isometric embedding of such space in general position extends to a simplicial isometric embedding of the whole space.
The aim of this paper is to give not only an explicit upper bound of the total Q-curvature but also an induced isoperimetric deficit formula for the complete conformal metrics on $\mathbb R^n$, $n\ge 3$ with scalar curvature being nonnegative near infinity and Q-curvature being absolutely convergent.
We show that in any infinitesimally Hilbertian $CD^*(K,N)$-space at almost every point there exists a Euclidean weak tangent, i.e. there exists a sequence of dilations of the space that converges to a Euclidean space in the pointed measured Gromov-Hausdorff topology. The proof follows by considering iterated tangents and the splitting theorem for infinitesimally Hilbertian $CD^*(0,N)$-spaces.
Let a \neq b be two positive scalars. A Euclidean representation of a simple graph G in R^r is a mapping of the nodes of G into points in R^r such that the squared Euclidean distance between any two points is a if the corresponding nodes are adjacent and b otherwise. A Euclidean representation is spherical if the points lie on an (r-1)-sphere, and is J-spherical if this sphere has radius 1 and a=2 < b. Let dim_E(G), dim_S(G) and dim_J(G) denote, respectively, the smallest dimension r for which G admits a Euclidean, spherical and J-spherical representation. In this paper, we extend and simplify…
An $L$-spherical code is a set of Euclidean unit vectors whose pairwise inner products belong to the set $L$. We show, for a fixed $α,β>0$, that the size of any $[-1,-β]\cup\{α\}$-spherical code is at most linear in the dimension. In particular, this bound applies to sets of lines such that every two are at a fixed angle to each another.
