Problems on Polytopes, Their Groups, and Realizations

The paper gives a collection of open problems on abstract polytopes that were either presented at the Polytopes Day in Calgary or motivated by discussions at the preceding Workshop on Convex and Abstract Polytopes at the Banff International Research Station in May 2005.Comment: 25 pages (Periodica Mathematica Hungarica, Special Issue on Discrete Geometry, to appear

Uniformizing surfaces via discrete harmonic maps

We show that for any closed surface of genus greater than one and for any finite weighted graph filling the surface, there exists a hyperbolic metric which realizes the least Dirichlet energy harmonic embedding of the graph among a fixed homotopy class and all hyperbolic metrics on the surface. We give explicit examples of such hyperbolic surfaces through a new interpretation of the Nielsen realization problem for the mapping class groups.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figure

Equivelar and d-Covered Triangulations of Surfaces. I

We survey basic properties and bounds for $q$-equivelar and $d$-covered triangulations of closed surfaces. Included in the survey is a list of the known sources for $q$-equivelar and $d$-covered triangulations. We identify all orientable and non-orientable surfaces $M$ of Euler characteristic $0>\chi(M)\geq -230$ which admit non-neighborly $q$-equivelar triangulations with equality in the upper bound $q\leq\Bigl\lfloor\tfrac{1}{2}(5+\sqrt{49-24\chi (M)})\Bigl\rfloor$. These examples give rise to $d$-covered triangulations with equality in the upper bound $d\leq2\Bigl\lfloor\tfrac{1}{2}(5+\sqrt{49-24\chi (M)})\Bigl\rfloor$. A generalization of Ringel's cyclic $7{\rm mod}12$ series of neighborly orientable triangulations to a two-parameter family of cyclic orientable triangulations $R_{k,n}$, $k\geq 0$, $n\geq 7+12k$, is the main result of this paper. In particular, the two infinite subseries $R_{k,7+12k+1}$ and $R_{k,7+12k+2}$, $k\geq 1$, provide non-neighborly examples with equality for the upper bound for $q$ as well as derived examples with equality for the upper bound for $d$.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure