On the volume and surface area of hyperbolic polyhedra (Q1179136)

Consider an ultra ideal tetrahedron in the projective model of \({\mathbf H}^ 3\) such that each vertex lies outside the sphere at infinity. Then by truncating a neighborhood of each vertex along its polar hyperplane we obtain a truncated tetrahedron. It has four hexagonal faces called internal ones, moreover, four triangular faces as external faces. Truncated tetrahedra are designed to construct manifolds with a totally geodesic boundary by glueing them along the internal faces so that the boundary of the manifold is formed by the external faces. The author proves a theorem of Fukaya (private communication): There is a positive constant \(c_ n\) such that for any compact hyperbolic \(n\)- manifold \(N\) (\(n\geq 3\)) with nonempty geodesic boundary \[ V_ n(N)/V_{n-1}(\partial N) \geq c_ n \] holds, where \(V_ n\) denotes the \(n\)-dimensional hyperbolic volume. Motivated by this fact, the author considers the relation between the volume of a truncated tetrahedron and the area of its external faces. Let \(\{T^ t\}_{(0<t\leq 1)}\) a one- parameter family of truncated tetrahedra with dihedral angles \(\theta^ t_ 1,\dots,\theta^ t_ 6\). Theorem: \(Vol T^ t\to 0\) as \(t\to 0\) while the sum of area of the external faces has a lower bound \(0 < A \leq \pi\) if and only if \[ (\theta^ t_ 1,\theta^ t_ 2,\theta^ t_ 3,\theta^ t_ 4,\theta^ t_ 5,\theta^ t_ 6)\to (0,0,0,\pi/2,\pi/2,\pi/2)\hbox{ or}\leqno(i) \] \[ (\theta^ t_ 2,\theta^ t_ 3,\theta^ t_ 4,\theta^ t_ 5,\theta^ t_ 6)\to(0,0,\pi,0,0)\hbox { and }\lim\sup\theta^ t_ 1\leq \pi-{A/2}, \] where the indices of angles may be shuffled by a permutation preserving the mutual position of the edges. The proof happens in more steps by hyperbolic trigonometry.