English

On curves and polygons with the equiangular chord property

Differential Geometry 2016-01-20 v2 Metric Geometry

Abstract

Let CC be a smooth, convex curve on either the sphere S2\mathbb{S}^{2}, the hyperbolic plane H2\mathbb{H}^{2} or the Euclidean plane E2\mathbb{E}^{2}, with the following property: there exists α\alpha, and parameterizations x(t),y(t)x(t), y(t) of CC such that for each tt, the angle between the chord connecting x(t)x(t) to y(t)y(t) and CC is α\alpha at both ends. Assuming that CC is not a circle, E. Gutkin completely characterized the angles α\alpha for which such a curve exists in the Euclidean case. We study the infinitesimal version of this problem in the context of the other two constant curvature geometries, and in particular we provide a complete characterization of the angles α\alpha for which there exists a non-trivial infinitesimal deformation of a circle through such curves with corresponding angle α\alpha. We also consider a discrete version of this property for Euclidean polygons, and in this case we give a complete description of all non-trivial solutions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1311.0817,
  title  = {On curves and polygons with the equiangular chord property},
  author = {Tarik Aougab and Xidian Sun and Serge Tabachnikov and Yuwen Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1311.0817},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Revision: better figures, acknowledgments added