A characterization of the angle defect and the Euler characteristic in dimension 2

DOI10.1007/S00454-008-9084-8MaRDI QIDQ848853zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Ethan D. Bloch

Publication date 23 February 2010

Published in Discrete \& Computational Geometry (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.2506

zbMATH Keywords

angle defectEuler characteristicsimplicial complexes

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Combinatorial properties of polytopes and polyhedra (number of faces, shortest paths, etc.) (52B05) Polyhedral manifolds (52B70)

Abstract: The angle defect, which is the standard way to measure curvature at the vertices of polyhedral surfaces, goes back at least as far as Descartes. Although the angle defect has been widely studied, there does not appear to be in the literature an axiomatic characterization of the angle defect. We give a characterization of the angle defect for simplicial surfaces, and we show that variants of the same characterization work for two known approaches to generalizing the angle defect to arbitrary 2-dimensional simplicial complexes. Simultaneously, we give a characterization of the Euler characteristic on 2-dimensional simplicial complexes in terms of being geometrically locally determined.

Review text

The ``Descartes-Gauss-Bonnet Theorem \(\sum_{v\in M} d(v,M) = 2\pi \chi(M)\) relates the curvature (angle defect or deficiency) \(d(v,M):=2\pi - \sum_{\alpha\ni v} \alpha\) at the vertices \(v\) of a triangulated polyhedral surface \(M\) to the Euler characteristic \(\chi(M)\) of \(M\). The author gives a characterization of the angle defect for simplicial surfaces and shows that variants of that work for two approaches to generalizing \(d(v,M)\) to arbitrary 2-dimensional simplicial complexes, one of which the author has given in [Beitr. Algebra Geom. 39, No. 2, 379--393 (1998; Zbl 0917.52010)]. Simultaneously, a characterization of \(\chi(M)\) is given for such complexes.

Recommendations

• The angle defect for arbitrary polyhedra
• On combinatorial Gauss-Bonnet theorem for general Euclidean simplicial complexes
• The angle defect for odd-dimensional simplicial manifolds
• Duality and the Descartes deficiency
• Critical points and the angle defect

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Cited in

(8)

• Descartes' theorem in \(n\) dimensions
• The angle defect for arbitrary polyhedra
• Critical points and the angle defect
• An overview of curvature bounds and spectral theory of planar tessellations
• Curvature analysis of frequency modulated manifolds in dimensionality reduction
• Pseudo-Angle Systems and the Simplicial Gauss–Bonnet–Chern Theorem
• Duality and the Descartes deficiency
• The angle defect for odd-dimensional simplicial manifolds

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