Polygons of the Lorentzian plane and spherical simplexes

DOI10.4171/EM/256MaRDI QIDQ2515079zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors François Fillastre

Publication date 10 February 2015

Published in Elemente der Mathematik (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3511, http://www.ems-ph.org/journals/show_pdf.php?vol=69&iss=3&issn=0013-6018&rank=4

zbMATH Keywords

\(t\)-convex polygonLorentz planespherical orthoscheme

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Convex sets in (2) dimensions (including convex curves) (52A10)

Abstract: It is known that the space of convex polygons in the Euclidean plane with fixed normals, up to homotheties and translations, endowed with the area form, is isometric to a hyperbolic polyhedron. In this note we show a class of convex polygons in the Lorentzian plane such that their moduli space, if the normals are fixed and endowed with a suitable area, is isometric to a spherical polyhedron. These polygons have an infinite number of vertices, are space-like, contained in the future cone of the origin, and setwise invariant under the action of a linear isometry.

Review text

In the paper, the author studies a class of noncompact plane polygons, called \(t\)-convex polygons. These polygons are described in term of Lorentz geometry on a Lorentz plane. Let \((\eta_1,\dots,\eta_n)\) be pairwise distinct unit future time-like vectors in a Lorentz plane and \(h_i>0, i=1,\dots,n\) be positive numbers. A \(t\)-convex polygon \(P\) is the intersection of half-planes bounded by the lines \(H^k_t(h_i\eta_i)^{\perp},k\in\mathbb Z,i=1,\dots,n\), where \[ H_t=\begin{pmatrix} \cosh t&\sinh t \cr \sinh t &\cosh t \end{pmatrix}, \] \[ a^{\perp}=\{x\in\mathbb R^2:\langle x,a\rangle=\langle a,a\rangle\}, \] \(\langle\;,\;\rangle\) is the Lorentz metric and the half planes are chosen such that \(\eta_i\) are inward pointing. Every \(t\)-convex polygon is an intersection of elementary \(t\)-convex polygons and the author considers polygons given by intersection of a minimal number \(m\) of elementary \(t\)-convex polygons. A parameter space of the class of these polygons is a cone in the \(m\)-dimensional vector space \(\mathbb R^m\) and the author defines a co-area function for these polygons which turns out to be a positive definite quadratic form on \(\mathbb R^m\). Restricting to polygons of coarea 1, the author gets a subset of the unit sphere in the parameter space. The author shows that this subset is a spherical orthoscheme. On the other hand, every spherical orthoscheme can be obtained in this way.

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Cited in

(7)

• Vortex filament equation for a regular polygon in the hyperbolic plane
• Shapes of polyhedra, mixed volumes and hyperbolic geometry
• On polygons in Lorenzian plane
• Fuchsian convex bodies: basics of Brunn-Minkowski theory
• SPHERICAL SIMPLICES AND THEIR POLARS
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1398656 (Why is no real title available?)
• On the Schrödinger map for regular helical polygons in the hyperbolic space

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