Discrete constant mean curvature surfaces on general graphs (Q2084522)

One of the principle goals of discrete differential geometry is to find discrete analogues of notions in the smooth setting. There are many ways to discretize an object of the smooth world and one of the main motivations is to find a discretization that preserves some of the structural properties of the object. As a part of this program, the present paper studies a discrete version of the notion of isothermic surfaces. An isothermic surface is a surface that admits a conformal curvature line parametrization. Examples include minimal surfaces or more generally constant mean curvature (CMC) surfaces. Minimal and CMC surfaces come in so-called associated families. Previous notions of discrete isothermic surfaces did not cover associated families as discrete isothermic surfaces. This is a gap that is filled by the new definition of discrete isothermic surfaces introduced in this paper. A novel aspect of the presented definition is that it applies to arbitrary discrete surfaces, modeled as a map from some general graph to \(\mathbb{R}^3\). The definition is based on an equivalent description of smooth isothermic surfaces that does not depend on a parametrization but instead on the existence of the Christoffel dual of a surface. Similarly to the smooth case, a discrete surface modeled a general graph is isothermic if there exists another discrete surface, named the discrete Christoffel dual, such that the two surfaces satisfy certain equations relating their edges and vertices in \(\mathbb{R}^3\). As a first step, it is shown that the definition of discrete isothermic surfaces is Möbius invariant. Then, additional criteria are introduced to present a definition of discrete minimal and CMC surfaces. There is a known construction recipe for smooth CMC surfaces called the (generalized) Weierstrass representation that yields a parametrization of a CMC surface. Another contribution of the paper is that a Weierstrass representation is derived for the introduced class of discrete CMC surfaces. One of the key tools used for this is additive rational Toda systems. The use of this notion in this context was previously investigated for quad graphs to obtain a Weiertrass representation for (a previous definition of) discrete CMC surfaces. This connection is extended to encompass all discrete CMC surfaces, based on the same formula (the Sym-Bobenko formula) that worked in previous known contexts. All in all, the paper brings together several different perspectives on discrete CMC surfaces and discrete isothermic surfaces and presents a framework in which different points of view are unified under the new, more general and arguably more natural definitions of the surfaces in question.