Infinitesimal conformal deformations of triangulated surfaces in space (Q1991399)

The paper considers infinitesimal conformal deformations of a triangulated surface in Euclidean space, where conformal here means that the deformation preserves length cross-ratios. The authors show that the space of infinitesimal conformal deformations of a triangulated surface \(f\) in Euclidean \(n\)-space is isomorphic to the space of infinitesimal isometric deformations of \(\Phi\circ f\) in the Euclidean \((n+1)\)-space, where \(\Phi\) denotes the stereographic projection. \par For a triangulated sphere in Euclidean 3-space that is infinitesimally rigid, which is a generic property, and a real function \(u\) defined on the vertices, it is proved that there exists an infinitesimal conformal deformation, unique up to Euclidean motions, with scale factor \(u\). \par The paper also proves that, for an open and dense set of closed triangulated surfaces in Euclidean 3-space, given a real function \(\rho\) defined on the vertices whose sum equals zero, there exists an infinitesimal conformal deformation with \(\rho\) as the change in mean curvature half-density. The exceptional triangulated surfaces are those for which \(\dim(\mathrm{Ker}(D)) > 4\), where \(D\) is the discrete Dirac operator. Along the paper, the authors define the discrete Dirac operator and prove many of its properties, among them the fact that \(\dim(\mathrm{Ker}(D)) \geq 4\). \par There exist triangulated surfaces which cannot be parameterized neither by the scale factor nor the change in mean curvature half-density, and they are called isothermic. The authors provide in the paper two examples of isothermic triangulated spheres.