scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1786679

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Publication:4547987





This paper lists results and sketches proofs obtained by the author in his thesis. The first part contains a probabilistic proof of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem by expressing the asymptotics (w.r.\ to a Poisson process) of the expectation value of the number of faces of certain random triangulations in terms of Gaussian curvature. The second part is concerned with abstract triangulations \(\mathcal T\) (with \(\chi<0\)) whose triangles \(T\) are endowed with interior angles (`angle systems'). If adjacent triangles \(ABC\) and \(A'BC\) can be realized in a constant curvature surface, and have angles \(\alpha,\beta,\gamma\) and \(\alpha',\beta',\gamma'\), then their circumcircles enclose the angle \(\psi^e=(\beta+\beta'+\gamma+\gamma'-\alpha-\alpha')/2\). Two angle systems are called conformally equivalent if the angles \(\psi^e\) are the same for both. After first replacing an angle system by a conformally equivalent one all of whose triangles are hyperbolic, the author considers the function \(H=\sum_{T\in{\mathcal T}}V_T\) with \(V_T\) being the volume of an ideal hyperbolic prism with the same angles as \(T\). It turns out that the unique minimum of \(H\) yields a conformally equivalent angle system realizable in a constant curvature surface, thus proving a discrete uniformization theorem. Finally the paper gives a survey of a proof of the continuous metric uniformization theorem in the case of \(\chi<0\) which uses probabilistic methods and the discrete results above. For a given metric \(g\), a conformally equivalent metric \(h=e^\phi g\) of constant curvature is found by maximizing a certain objective function \(I^g\) whose definition uses the asymptotic expectation values of prism volumes as above, and which is related to entropy, area, and the Laplacian via \(I^g(h)=M(g)-M(h)\), with \(M(h)=E(h)-12\pi\log(\det(\Delta_h)/A_h)\).











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