Alexandrov's theorem, weighted Delaunay triangulations, and mixed volumes (Q931891)

A convex polyhedral metric on an ordinary sphere \(M\) is such that each \(x \in M\) possesses an open neighbourhood \(U\) which is either isometric with a subset of \(\mathbb{R}^2\) or with an open subset of a cone with angle \(\alpha < 2\pi\). In the first case \(x\) is regular, and in the second it is singular; the set \(\Sigma\) of singular points of \(M\) is finite. In 1942, Alexandrov proved that \(M\) with a convex polyhedral metric is isometric to the boundary of a convex polyhedron \(P\), which is unique up to rigid motion. \textit{A. D. Alexandrov}'s proof can be found, with an appendix by \textit{A. D. Volkov}, in his book [Convex Polyhedra, Springer Monographs in Mathematics. Berlin: Springer (2005; Zbl 1067.52011)]. The authors here present a new proof, which enables the polyhedron \(P\) to be constructed from \(M\) by a suitable computer program. The core ideas of the proof are the following. The surface \(M\) yields a triangulation \(T\) into euclidean triangles by geodesics in \(M\), starting with vertices in \(\Sigma\). Suppose that each vertex \(i\) of such a triangle is joined to a further point \(a\) by an edge of length \(r_i\) (this is always possible if \(r_i = R\) is big enough); this is a generalized convex polyhedron. The curvature at the edge \(ai\) is \(\kappa_i = 2\pi - \omega_i\), where \(\omega_i\) is the sum of the dihedral angles of the pyramids containg \(ai\). Let \(\ell_{ij}\) be the length of an edge \(ij\) of a triangle and \(\theta_{ij}\) be the sum of the two dihedral angles of the pyramids with apex \(a\) at \(ij\). Then the total scalar curvature is \[ H(P(T,r)) = \sum_{i \in \mathcal{V}(T)} r_i\kappa_i + \sum_{ij \in \mathcal{E}(T)} \ell_{ij}(\pi - \theta_{ij}), \] where \(\mathcal{V}(T)\) and \(\mathcal{E}(T)\) are the vertex and edge sets of \(T\), respectively. Then the Hessian of \(H\) is non-degenerate if \(0 < \kappa_i < \delta_i\), the angle deficit at \(i\), for each \(i \in \mathcal{V}(T)\). Starting with the Delaunay triangulation \((T_D,r)\) of \(M\) and \(r_i = R\) sufficiently large, one then deforms the generalized convex polyhedron into a genuine convex polyhedron, noting that \[ \frac{\partial\kappa_{i}}{\partial r_{j}} = \frac{\partial^{2H}}{\partial r_{i}\partial r_{j}}. \] A further useful tool is the notion of the dual \(P^*\) of a generalized convex polyhedron \(P\), with the striking relationship \[ \frac{\partial^{2H}\partial r_i}{\partial r_{ji}}(P) = \frac{\partial^2\text{vol}}{\partial h_i \partial h_j}(P^*), \] where the \(h_i\) are the corresponding altitudes of \(P^*\). Employing mixed volumes, and partly generalizing the Alexandrov-Fenchel theorem on mixed volumes, it is shown that the Hessian of \(\text{vol}(P^*)\) is non-degenerate under the same condition on the \(\kappa_i\). This fascinating paper will repay detailed study by the interested reader.