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Shapes of polyhedra and triangulations of the sphere
The space of shapes of a polyhedron with given total angles less than 2\pi at
each of its n vertices has a Kaehler metric, locally isometric to complex
hyperbolic space CH^{n-3}. The metric is not complete: collisions between
vertices take place a finite distance from a nonsingular point. The metric
completion is a complex hyperbolic cone-manifold. In some interesting special
cases, the metric completion is an orbifold. The concrete description of these
spaces of shapes gives information about the combinatorial classification of
triangulations of the sphere with no more than 6 triangles at a vertex.Comment: 39 pages. Published copy, also available at
http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTMon1/paper25.abs.htm
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