Consider an analytic map of a neighborhood of 0 in a vector space to a Euclidean space. Suppose that this map takes all germs of lines passing through 0 to germs of circles. Such a map is called rounding. We introduce a natural equivalence relation on roundings and prove that any rounding, whose differential at 0 has rank at least 2, is equivalent to a fractional quadratic rounding. A fractional quadratic map is just the ratio of a quadratic map and a quadratic polynomial. We also show that any rounding gives rise to a quadratic map between spheres. The known results on quadratic maps between spheres have some interesting implications concerning roundings.
We list all analytic diffeomorphisms between an open subset of the 4-dimensional projective space and an open subset of the 4-dimensional sphere that take all line segments to arcs of round circles. These are the following: restrictions of the quaternionic Hopf fibrations and projections from a hyperplane to a sphere from some point. We prove this by finding the exact solutions of the corresponding system of partial differential equations.
We generalize Cauchy's celebrated theorem on the global rigidity of convex polyhedra in Euclidean $3$-space $\mathbb{E}^{3}$ to the context of circle polyhedra in the $2$-sphere $\mathbb{S}^{2}$. We prove that any two convex and proper non-unitary c-polyhedra with Möbius-congruent faces that are consistently oriented are Möbius-congruent. Our result implies the global rigidity of convex inversive distance circle packings in the Riemann sphere as well as that of certain hyperideal hyperbolic polyhedra in $\mathbb{H}^{3}$.
With the help of hyper-ideal circle pattern theory, we have developed a discrete version of the classical uniformization theorems for surfaces represented as finite branched covers over the Riemann sphere as well as compact polyhedral surfaces with non-positive curvature. We show that in the case of such surfaces discrete uniformization via hyper-ideal circle patterns always exists and is unique. We also propose a numerical algorithm, utilizing convex optimization, that constructs the desired discrete uniformization.
We say that a tiling separates discs of a packing in the Euclidean plane, if each tile contains exactly one member of the packing. It is a known elementary geometric problem to show that for each locally finite packing of circular discs, there exists a separating tiling with convex polygons. In this paper we show that this separating property remains true for circle packings on the sphere and in the hyperbolic plane. Moreover, we show that in the Euclidean plane circles are the only convex discs, whose packings with similar copies can be always separated by polygonal tilings. The analogous sta…
In this paper we characterize compact extended Ptolemy metric spaces with many circles up to Möbius equivalence. This characterization yields a Möbius characterization of the $n$-dimensional spheres $S^n$ and hemispheres $S^n_+$ when endowed with their chordal metrics. In particular, we show that every compact extended Ptolemy metric space with the property that every three points are contained in a circle is Möbius equivalent to $(S^n,d_0)$ for some $n\ge 1$, the $n$-dimensional sphere $S^n$ with its chordal metric.
Recently, we enumerate up to isometry, all locally rigid circle packings on the unit sphere with number of circles N<12. This problem is equivalent to the enumeration of irreducible contact graphs. In this paper we show that by using the list of irreducible graphs can solve various problems of extreme packings such as the Tammes problem for the sphere and the projective plane, the maximal contacts problem, Danzer's and other problems on irreducible contact graphs.
A non-degenerate two-dimensional linear operator $φ$ transforms the unit circle into ellipse. Let $p$ be the length of its bigger axis and $q$ -- the length of smaller. We can define the deformation coefficient $k(φ)$ as $q/p$. Analogously, if $φ$ is a non-degenerate three-dimensional operator, then it transforms the unit sphere into ellipsoid. If $p>q>r$ are lengths of its axes, then deformation coefficient $k(φ)$ will be defined as $r/p$. In this work we compute the mean value of deformation coefficient in two-dimensional case and give an estimation of mean value in three-dimensional case.
Consider a polygon P and all neighboring circles (circles going through three consecutive vertices of P). We say that a neighboring circle is extremal if it is empty (no vertices of P inside) or full (no vertices of P outside). It is well known that for any convex polygon there exist at least two empty and at least two full circles, i.e. at least four extremal circles. In 1990 Schatteman considered a generalization of this theorem for convex polytopes in d-dimensional Euclidean space. Namely, he claimed that there exist at least 2d extremal neighboring spheres. In this paper, we show that ther…
This paper shows that in dimensions n \geq 2 for any partition of the set of points in the standard n-sphere \sum_{i=0}^n x_i^2 =1 in R^{n+1} into (n+3) or more nonempty sets, there exists a hyperplane in R^{n+1} that intersects at least (n+2) of these sets. This result is used to prove a result in inversive geometry. A mapping T: S^2 \to S^n, for n\geq 2,not assumed continuous or even measurable, is called weakly circle-preserving if the image of any circle is contained in some circle in the range space S^n. If such a map T has a range T(S^2) in circular general position, meaning that any cir…
Given a metric space X and a distance threshold r>0, the Vietoris-Rips simplicial complex has as its simplices the finite subsets of X of diameter less than r. A theorem of Jean-Claude Hausmann states that if X is a Riemannian manifold and r is sufficiently small, then the Vietoris-Rips complex is homotopy equivalent to the original manifold. Little is known about the behavior of Vietoris-Rips complexes for larger values of r, even though these complexes arise naturally in applications using persistent homology. We show that as r increases, the Vietoris-Rips complex of the circle obtains the h…
We study the orbit of $\mathbb{R}$ under the Bianchi group $\operatorname{PSL}_2(\mathcal{O}_K)$, where $K$ is an imaginary quadratic field. The orbit, called a Schmidt arrangement $\mathcal{S}_K$, is a geometric realisation, as an intricate circle packing, of the arithmetic of $K$. This paper presents several examples of this phenomenon. First, we show that the curvatures of the circles are integer multiples of $\sqrt{-Δ}$ and describe the curvatures of tangent circles in terms of the norm form of $\mathcal{O}_K$. Second, we show that the circles themselves are in bijection with certain ideal…
Let S^n be the standard n-sphere embedded in R^{n+1}. A mapping T: S^n \to S^n, not assumed continuous or even measurable, nor injective, is called weakly circle-preserving if the image of any circle under T is contained in some circle in the range space S^n. The main result of this paper shows that any weakly circle-preserving map satisfying a very mild condition on its range T(S^n) must be a Mobius transformation.
How should we place $n$ great circles on a sphere to minimize the furthest distance between a point on the sphere and its nearest great circle? Fejes Tóth conjectured that the optimum is attained by placing $n$ circles evenly spaced all passing through the north and south poles. This conjecture was recently proved by Jiang and Polyanskii. We present a short simplification of Ortega-Moreno's alternate proof of this conjecture.
The Koebe circle packing theorem states that every finite planar graph can be realized as the nerve of a packing of (non-congruent) circles in R^3. We investigate the average kissing number of finite packings of non-congruent spheres in R^3 as a first restriction on the possible nerves of such packings. We show that the supremum k of the average kissing number for all packings satisfies 12.566 ~ 666/53 <= k < 8 + 4*sqrt(3) ~ 14.928 We obtain the upper bound by a resource exhaustion argument and the upper bound by a construction involving packings of spherical caps in S^3. Our result contradict…
Thickenings of a metric space capture local geometric properties of the space. Here we exhibit applications of lower bounding the topology of thickenings of the circle and more generally the sphere. We explain interconnections with the geometry of circle actions on Euclidean space, the structure of zeros of trigonometric polynomials, and theorems of Borsuk-Ulam type. We use the combinatorial and geometric structure of the convex hull of orbits of circle actions on Euclidean space to give geometric proofs of the homotopy type of metric thickenings of the circle. Homotopical connectivity bounds …
