Properties of triangulations obtained by the longest-edge bisection (Q403206)

Surface triangulations, and an algorithms for subsequent refinements, play an important role in computer visualization and in applications of differential equations. A crucial property for such an algorithm is non-degeneracy. The longest-edge (LE) bisection of a triangle connects the midpoint of its longest edge with the opposite vertex. The LE-bisection of triangles has two important properties with regard to non-degeneracy. The first property is that iterative application of the LE-bisection to any given triangle and its descendants only produce a finite number of distinct (up to similarity) triangles. In addition, if \(\alpha\) is the smallest angle of an initial triangle, then the interior angles of all subsequent triangles are larger than \(\alpha/2\). In this well written article, the authors give new proofs of these properties using concepts from hyperbolic geometry. In Section 2 of the paper, a scheme for normalizing triangles is given. The longest edge of a triangle is mapped to the interval with endpoints \((0,0)\) and \((1,0)\), and the shortest edge is kept to the left so that the free vertex is in the upper half-plane. Thereby, all similar triangles are characterized by a unique complex number in the region \[ \Sigma=\{0<\mathrm{Re}(z)\leq1/2,\mathrm{Im}(z)>0,|z-1|\leq1\}. \] Let \(\Delta\) be a triangle with associated complex number \(z\). The complex number corresponding to the left triangle after the LE-bisection of \(\Delta\) is written \(\mathrm{w}_L(z)\). The number \(\mathrm{w}_R(z)\) is defined similarly. In Section 3, it is shown that the functions \(\mathrm{w}_L\) and \(\mathrm{w}_R\) do not increase the hyperbolic distance between points in \(\Sigma\). In Section 4, it is proved that the orbit of a triangle under the maps \(\mathrm{w}_L\) and \(\mathrm{w}_R\) is finite. This implies the first stated property of LE-bisection. The second property is proved in Section 5.