We study rigidity of polyhedral surfaces and the moduli space of polyhedral surfaces using variational principles. Curvature like quantities for polyhedral surfaces are introduced. Many of them are shown to determine the polyhedral metric up to isometry. The action functionals in the variational approaches are derived from the cosine law and the Lengendre transformation of them. These include energies used by Colin de Verdiere, Braegger, Rivin, Cohen-Kenyon-Propp, Leibon and Bobenko-Springborn for variational principles on triangulated surfaces. Our study is based on a set of identities satisfied by the derivative of the cosine law. These identities which exhibit similarity in all spaces of constant curvature are probably a discrete analogous of the Bianchi identity.
This paper investigates several global rigidity issues for polyhedral surfaces including inversive distance circle packings. Inversive distance circle packings are polyhedral surfaces introduced by P. Bowers and K. Stephenson as a generalization of Andreev-Thurston's circle packing. They conjectured that inversive distance circle packings are rigid. Using a recent work of R. Guo on variational principle associated to the inversive distance circle packing, we prove rigidity conjecture of Bowers-Stephenson in this paper. We also show that each polyhedral metric on a triangulated surface is deter…
We study the rigidity of polyhedral surfaces using variational principle. The action functionals are derived from the cosine laws. The main focus of this paper is on the cosine law for a non-triangular region bounded by three possibly disjoint geodesics. Several of these cosine laws were first discovered and used by Fenchel and Nielsen. By studying the derivative of the cosine laws, we discover a uniform approach on several variational principles on polyhedral surfaces with or without boundary. As a consequence, the work of Penner, Bobenko-Springborn and Thurston on rigidity of polyhedral surf…
The vertex scaling for piecewise linear metrics on polyhedral surfaces was introduced by Luo, who proved the local rigidity by establishing a variational principle and conjectured the global rigidity. Luo's conjecture was solved by Bobenko-Pinkall-Springborn, who also introduced the vertex scaling for piecewise hyperbolic metrics and proved its global rigidity. Bobenko-Pinkall-Spingborn's proof is based on their observation of the connection of vertex scaling and the geometry of polyhedra in $3$-dimensional hyperbolic space and the concavity of the volume of ideal and hyper-ideal tetrahedra. I…
We investigate the rigidity of hyperbolic cone metrics on $3$-manifolds which are isometric gluing of ideal and hyper-ideal tetrahedra in hyperbolic spaces. These metrics will be called ideal and hyper-ideal hyperbolic polyhedral metrics. It is shown that a hyper-ideal hyperbolic polyhedral metric is determined up to isometry by its curvature and a decorated ideal hyperbolic polyhedral metric is determined up to isometry and change of decorations by its curvature. The main tool used in the proof is the Fenchel dual of the volume function.
In this paper, we introduce a parameterized discrete curvature ($α$-curvature) for piecewise linear metrics on polyhedral surfaces, which is a generalization of the classical discrete curvature. A discrete uniformization theorem is established for the parameterized discrete curvature, which generalizes the discrete uniformization theorem obtained by Gu-Luo-Sun-Wu. We also prove the global rigidity of parameterized discrete curvature with respect to the discrete conformal factors, which confirms a generalized Luo conjecture on rigidity of discrete curvatures. We further introduce a parameterize…
Discrete conformal structure on polyhedral surfaces is a discrete analogue of the smooth conformal structure on surfaces that assigns discrete metrics by scalar functions defined on vertices. In this paper, we introduce combinatorial $α$-curvature for discrete conformal structures on polyhedral surfaces, which is a parameterized generalization of the classical combinatorial curvature. Then we prove the local and global rigidity of combinatorial $α$-curvature with respect to discrete conformal structures on polyhedral surfaces, which confirms parameterized Glickenstein rigidity conjecture. To s…
Vertex scaling of piecewise linear metrics on surfaces introduced by Luo is a straightforward discretization of smooth conformal structures on surfaces. Combinatorial $α$-curvature for vertex scaling of piecewise linear metrics on surfaces is a discretization of Gaussian curvature on surfaces. In this paper, we investigate the prescribing combinatorial $α$-curvature problem on polyhedral surfaces. Using Gu-Luo-Sun-Wu's discrete conformal theory for piecewise linear metrics on surfaces and variational principles with constraints, we prove some Kazdan-Warner type theorems for prescribing combina…
The paper proves a result on the convergence of discrete conformal maps to the Riemann mappings for Jordan domains. It is a counterpart of Rodin-Sullivan's theorem on convergence of circle packing mappings to the Riemann mapping in the new setting of discrete conformality. The proof follows the same strategy that Rodin-Sullivan used by establishing a rigidity result for regular hexagonal triangulations of the plane and estimating the quasiconformal constants associated to the discrete conformal maps.
A discrete conformality for hyperbolic polyhedral surfaces is introduced in this paper. This discrete conformality is shown to be computable. It is proved that each hyperbolic polyhedral metric on a closed surface is discrete conformal to a unique hyperbolic polyhedral metric with a given discrete curvature satisfying Gauss-Bonnet formula. Furthermore, the hyperbolic polyhedral metric with given curvature can be obtained using a discrete Yamabe flow with surgery. In particular, each hyperbolic polyhedral metric on a closed surface with negative Euler characteristic is discrete conformal to a u…
A discrete conformality for polyhedral metrics on surfaces is introduced in this paper which generalizes earlier work on the subject. It is shown that each polyhedral metric on a surface is discrete conformal to a constant curvature polyhedral metric which is unique up to scaling. Furthermore, the constant curvature metric can be found using a discrete Yamabe flow with surgery.
In this paper, we will construct an example of a closed Riemann surface $X$ that can be realized as a quotient of a triply periodic polyhedral surface $Π\subset \mathbb{R}^3$ where the Weierstrass points of $X$ coincide with the vertices of $Π.$ First we construct $Π$ by attaching Platonic solids in a periodic manner and consider the surface of this solid. Due to periodicity we can find a compact quotient of this surface, which has genus $g = 3.$ We claim that the resulting surface is not hyperelliptic and also that it is regular. By regular, we mean that the automorphism group of $X$ is trans…
This paper investigates the combinatorial $α$-curvature for vertex scaling of piecewise hyperbolic metrics on polyhedral surfaces, which is a parameterized generalization of the classical combinatorial curvature. A discrete uniformization theorem for combinatorial $α$-curvature is established, which generalizes Gu-Guo-Luo-Sun-Wu's discrete uniformization theorem for classical combinatorial curvature. We further introduce combinatorial $α$-Yamabe flow and combinatorial $α$-Calabi flow for vertex scaling to find piecewise hyperbolic metrics with prescribed combinatorial $α$-curvatures. To handle…
We present and apply a method for disproving the existence of polyhedral immersions in $\mathbb{R}^3$ of certain triangulations on non-orientable surfaces. In particular, it is proved that neither of the two vertex-minimal, neighborly 9-vertex triangulations of the non-orientable surface of genus 5 are realizable as immersed polyhedral surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$.
In this note, we consider the rigidity of the focal decomposition of closed hyperbolic surfaces. We show that, generically, the focal decomposition of a closed hyperbolic surface does not allow for non-trivial topological deformations, without changing the hyperbolic structure of the surface. By classical rigidity theory this is also true in dimension $n \geq 3$. Our current result extends a previous result that flat tori in dimension $n \geq 2$ that are focally equivalent are isometric modulo rescaling.
The aim of this paper is to show the rigidity of homologically trivial actions of prime order on K3 surfaces. To be precise, we show that homotopy K3 surfaces do not admit a periodic diffeomorphism of odd prime order 3 acting trivially on cohomology. Moreover, we give an obstruction in terms of the rationality and sign of the spin numbers to the existence of a periodic diffeomorphism of odd prime order acting trivially on cohomology of homotopy K3 surfaces.
The relative chromatic number $c\_0(S)$ of a compact surface $S$ with boundary is defined as the supremum of the chromatic numbers of graphs embedded in $S$ with all vertices on $\partial S$. This topological invariant was introduced for the study of the multiplicity of the first Steklov eigenvalue of $S$. In this article, we show that $c\_0(S)$ is also relevant for the study of tight polyhedral embeddings of $S$ byproving two results. The first one is that if there is a tight polyhedral embedding of $S$ in $\R^n$ which is not contained in a hyperplane, then $n\leq c\_0(S)-1$. The second resul…
Let $S_{g,n}$ be a surface of genus $g > 1$ with $n>0$ punctures equipped with a complete hyperbolic cusp metric. Then it can be uniquely realized as the boundary metric of an ideal Fuchsian polyhedron. In the present paper we give a new variational proof of this result. We also give an alternative proof of the existence and uniqueness of a hyperbolic polyhedral metric with prescribed curvature in a given conformal class.
We extend Jendrol' and Skupień's results about the local structure of maps on the 2-sphere: In this paper we show that if a polyhedral map $G$ on a surface $\M$ of Euler characteristic $χ(\M) \le 0$ has more than $126|χ(\M)|$ vertices, then $G$ has a vertex with "nearly" non-negative combinatorial curvature. As a corollary of this, we can deduce that path transferability of such graphs are at most 12.
We explore the perspective of a bug living on the two-dimensional surface of a polyhedron. Images of various kinds of effects like lensing and cloaking are shown via color pictures of three viewpoints: the first person perspective of the bug, a map of the bug's viewpoint, and a look at the bug on the embedded polyhedron from a three-dimensional exterior viewer. The pictures were constructed by computing the exponential map of a polyhedron by cutting and rotating faces into the tangent plane of the bug.
We study the arc complex of a surface with marked points in the interior and on the boundary. We prove that the isomorphism type of the arc complex determines the topology of the underlying surface, and that in all but a few cases every automorphism is induced by a homeomorphism of the surface. As an application we deduce some rigidity results for the Fomin-Shapiro-Thurston cluster algebra associated to such a surface. Our proofs do not employ any known simplicial rigidity result.
This article presents an improvement and extension of the heuristic first presented by Hougardy, Lutz, and Zelke in 2010 for realizing triangulated orientable surfaces with few vertices by a simplex-wise linear embedding. The improvement consists in the applicability to non-orientable surfaces (simplex-wise linear immersions) as well as symmetric realizations. With the help of our algorithm, numerous - often symmetric - realizations of non-orientable surfaces with the minimal number or few vertices have been obtained for the first time. These examples include the the Projective Plane with one …
Surface groups are determined among limit groups by their profinite completions. As a corollary, the set of surface words in a free group is closed in the profinite topology.
We show that every auto-homeomorphism of the unmeasured lamination space of an orientable surface of finite type is induced by a unique extended mapping class unless the surface is a sphere with at most four punctures or a torus with at most two punctures or a closed surface of genus 2.
Let $M$ be a smooth closed orientable surface. Let $F$ be the space of Morse functions on $M$ having fixed number of critical points of each index, moreover at least $χ(M)+1$ critical points are labeled by different labels (enumerated). A notion of a skew cylindric-polyhedral complex, which generalizes the notion of a polyhedral complex, is introduced. The skew cylindric-polyhedral complex $\mathbb{\widetilde K}$ (the "complex of framed Morse functions"), associated with the space $F$, is defined. In the case when $M=S^2$, the polyhedron $\mathbb{\widetilde K}$ is finite; its Euler characteris…
We study the geometry of hyperbolic cone surfaces, possibly with cusps or geodesic boundaries. We prove that any hyperbolic cone structure on a surface of non-exceptional type is determined up to isotopy by the geodesic lengths of a finite specific homotopy classes of non-peripheral simple closed curves. As an application, we show that the Thurston asymmetric metric is well-defined on the Teichmüller space of hyperbolic cone surfaces with fixed cone angles and boundary lengths. We compare such a Teichmüller space with the Teichmüller space of complete hyperbolic surfaces with punctures, by sho…
