Discrete minimal surfaces: Old and New

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lam, Wai Yeung, Yasumoto, Masashi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Lam, Wai Yeung
Yasumoto, Masashi
author_facet Lam, Wai Yeung
Yasumoto, Masashi
contents We survey structure-preserving discretizations of minimal surfaces in Euclidean space. Our focus is on a discretization defined via parallel face offsets of polyhedral surfaces, which naturally leads to a notion of vanishing mean curvature and a corresponding variational characterization. All simply connected discrete minimal surfaces of this type can be constructed from circle patterns via a discrete Weierstrass representation formula. This representation links the space of discrete minimal surfaces to the deformation space of circle patterns, and thereby to classical Teichmüller theory. We also discuss variants of discrete minimal surfaces obtained by modifying the definition of mean curvature, restricting the variational criterion, or replacing circle pattern data with discrete conformal equivalence, Koebe-type circle packings, or quadrilateral meshes with factorized cross ratios. We conclude with open questions on discrete minimal surfaces.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_23757
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discrete minimal surfaces: Old and New
Lam, Wai Yeung
Yasumoto, Masashi
Differential Geometry
Complex Variables
Geometric Topology
53A10, 52C26, 52B10, 53A70
We survey structure-preserving discretizations of minimal surfaces in Euclidean space. Our focus is on a discretization defined via parallel face offsets of polyhedral surfaces, which naturally leads to a notion of vanishing mean curvature and a corresponding variational characterization. All simply connected discrete minimal surfaces of this type can be constructed from circle patterns via a discrete Weierstrass representation formula. This representation links the space of discrete minimal surfaces to the deformation space of circle patterns, and thereby to classical Teichmüller theory. We also discuss variants of discrete minimal surfaces obtained by modifying the definition of mean curvature, restricting the variational criterion, or replacing circle pattern data with discrete conformal equivalence, Koebe-type circle packings, or quadrilateral meshes with factorized cross ratios. We conclude with open questions on discrete minimal surfaces.
title Discrete minimal surfaces: Old and New
topic Differential Geometry
Complex Variables
Geometric Topology
53A10, 52C26, 52B10, 53A70
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23757