Variational principles for branched circle patterns (Q880315)

The authors consider variational principles for branched circle patterns introduced by \textit{P. Bowers} and \textit{K. Stephenson} in [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc.(3)73, 185--215 (1996; Zbl 0856.51012)]. They use critical point theory to establish existence and uniqueness of circle packings. First the geometric problem of constructing branched circle pattern is transformed into analytic problem of finding radii of the circles. Next they construct two branched circle pattern functionals for the Euclidean and hyperbolic case. Then they prove that the two functionals are strictly convex and have critical points. Using transformations of isometry and stereographic projection the authors obtain the existence and uniqueness of configurations of circles with prescribed combinatoric pattern, angles and branched sets in the sphere, Euclidean plane, hyperbolic plane and Riemann sphere. They apply the Ricci flow method to give an approximation scheme which converges exponentially to the branched circle pattern metric.