Discrete Yamabe Problem for Polyhedral Surfaces

Discrete Comput Geom. 2023;70(1):123-153. doi: 10.1007/s00454-023-00484-2. Epub 2023 Mar 13.

Abstract

We study a new discretization of the Gaussian curvature for polyhedral surfaces. This discrete Gaussian curvature is defined on each conical singularity of a polyhedral surface as the quotient of the angle defect and the area of the Voronoi cell corresponding to the singularity. We divide polyhedral surfaces into discrete conformal classes using a generalization of discrete conformal equivalence pioneered by Feng Luo. We subsequently show that, in every discrete conformal class, there exists a polyhedral surface with constant discrete Gaussian curvature. We also provide explicit examples to demonstrate that this surface is in general not unique.

Keywords: Delaunay triangulation; Discrete Gaussian curvature; Discrete conformal equivalence; Hyperbolic geometry; Piecewise linear metric.