2,494 research outputs found

    Local Criteria for Triangulation of Manifolds

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    We present criteria for establishing a triangulation of a manifold. Given a manifold M, a simplicial complex A, and a map H from the underlying space of A to M, our criteria are presented in local coordinate charts for M, and ensure that H is a homeomorphism. These criteria do not require a differentiable structure, or even an explicit metric on M. No Delaunay property of A is assumed. The result provides a triangulation guarantee for algorithms that construct a simplicial complex by working in local coordinate patches. Because the criteria are easily verified in such a setting, they are expected to be of general use

    Complexity of 3-manifolds

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    We give a summary of known results on Matveev's complexity of compact 3-manifolds. The only relevant new result is the classification of all closed orientable irreducible 3-manifolds of complexity 10.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures, minor correction

    Riemannian simplices and triangulations

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    We study a natural intrinsic definition of geometric simplices in Riemannian manifolds of arbitrary dimension nn, and exploit these simplices to obtain criteria for triangulating compact Riemannian manifolds. These geometric simplices are defined using Karcher means. Given a finite set of vertices in a convex set on the manifold, the point that minimises the weighted sum of squared distances to the vertices is the Karcher mean relative to the weights. Using barycentric coordinates as the weights, we obtain a smooth map from the standard Euclidean simplex to the manifold. A Riemannian simplex is defined as the image of this barycentric coordinate map. In this work we articulate criteria that guarantee that the barycentric coordinate map is a smooth embedding. If it is not, we say the Riemannian simplex is degenerate. Quality measures for the "thickness" or "fatness" of Euclidean simplices can be adapted to apply to these Riemannian simplices. For manifolds of dimension 2, the simplex is non-degenerate if it has a positive quality measure, as in the Euclidean case. However, when the dimension is greater than two, non-degeneracy can be guaranteed only when the quality exceeds a positive bound that depends on the size of the simplex and local bounds on the absolute values of the sectional curvatures of the manifold. An analysis of the geometry of non-degenerate Riemannian simplices leads to conditions which guarantee that a simplicial complex is homeomorphic to the manifold

    Incompressibility criteria for spun-normal surfaces

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    We give a simple sufficient condition for a spun-normal surface in an ideal triangulation to be incompressible, namely that it is a vertex surface with non-empty boundary which has a quadrilateral in each tetrahedron. While this condition is far from being necessary, it is powerful enough to give two new results: the existence of alternating knots with non-integer boundary slopes, and a proof of the Slope Conjecture for a large class of 2-fusion knots. While the condition and conclusion are purely topological, the proof uses the Culler-Shalen theory of essential surfaces arising from ideal points of the character variety, as reinterpreted by Thurston and Yoshida. The criterion itself comes from the work of Kabaya, which we place into the language of normal surface theory. This allows the criterion to be easily applied, and gives the framework for proving that the surface is incompressible. We also explore which spun-normal surfaces arise from ideal points of the deformation variety. In particular, we give an example where no vertex or fundamental surface arises in this way.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figures. V2: New remark in Section 9.1, additional references; V3 Minor edits, to appear in Trans. Amer. Math. So

    Generalized Sums over Histories for Quantum Gravity II. Simplicial Conifolds

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    This paper examines the issues involved with concretely implementing a sum over conifolds in the formulation of Euclidean sums over histories for gravity. The first step in precisely formulating any sum over topological spaces is that one must have an algorithmically implementable method of generating a list of all spaces in the set to be summed over. This requirement causes well known problems in the formulation of sums over manifolds in four or more dimensions; there is no algorithmic method of determining whether or not a topological space is an n-manifold in five or more dimensions and the issue of whether or not such an algorithm exists is open in four. However, as this paper shows, conifolds are algorithmically decidable in four dimensions. Thus the set of 4-conifolds provides a starting point for a concrete implementation of Euclidean sums over histories in four dimensions. Explicit algorithms for summing over various sets of 4-conifolds are presented in the context of Regge calculus. Postscript figures available via anonymous ftp at black-hole.physics.ubc.ca (137.82.43.40) in file gen2.ps.Comment: 82pp., plain TeX, To appear in Nucl. Phys. B,FF-92-

    Constant Scalar Curvature Metrics on Boundary Complexes of Cyclic Polytopes

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    In [7], a notion of constant scalar curvature metrics on piecewise flat manifolds is defined. Such metrics are candidates for canonical metrics on discrete manifolds. In this paper, we define a class of vertex transitive metrics on certain triangulations of S3\mathbb{S}^3; namely, the boundary complexes of cyclic polytopes. We use combinatorial properties of cyclic polytopes to show that, for any number of vertices, these metrics have constant scalar curvature.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

    Constructing Intrinsic Delaunay Triangulations of Submanifolds

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    We describe an algorithm to construct an intrinsic Delaunay triangulation of a smooth closed submanifold of Euclidean space. Using results established in a companion paper on the stability of Delaunay triangulations on δ\delta-generic point sets, we establish sampling criteria which ensure that the intrinsic Delaunay complex coincides with the restricted Delaunay complex and also with the recently introduced tangential Delaunay complex. The algorithm generates a point set that meets the required criteria while the tangential complex is being constructed. In this way the computation of geodesic distances is avoided, the runtime is only linearly dependent on the ambient dimension, and the Delaunay complexes are guaranteed to be triangulations of the manifold
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