Acute triangulations of flat Möbius strips (Q2369931)

A triangulation \(T\) of a two-dimensional Alexandrov space \(M\) with curvature bounded below means a collection of triangles covering the space such that the intersection of any two triangles has an empty interior. The sides of the triangles are supposed to be shortest paths in \(M\). A triangulation is called acute if each angle of each triangle from \(T\) is acute. The author considers a Möbius strip \(M(\alpha)\), \(\alpha>0\), obtained from a flat rectangle \(R\) of sides 1 and \(\alpha\) by identifying pairs of points symmetric about the center of \(R\) and lying on the sides of length 1. This is an Alexandrov space \(M\). By considering three cases: \(0<\alpha\leq 1\), \(1<\alpha<\sqrt{5/3}\), and \(\sqrt{5/3}\leq\alpha\), the author shows that for any \(M(\alpha)\), \(\alpha>0\), there exists an acute triangulation of \(M(\alpha)\) consisting of 9 or fewer triangles. This upper bound 9 is the best possible.