Tripod configurations of curves

Abstract

Tripod configurations of plane curves, formed by certain triples of normal lines coinciding at a point, were introduced by Tabachnikov, who showed that $C^2$ closed convex curves possess at least two tripod configurations. Later, Kao and Wang established the existence of tripod configurations for $C^2$ closed locally convex curves. In this paper we generalize these two results, answering a conjecture of Tabachnikov on the existence of tripod configurations for all $C^2$ closed plane curves by proving existence for a generalized notion of tripod configuration. We then demonstrate the existence of the natural extensions of these tripod configurations to the spherical and hyperbolic geometries for a certain class of convex curves, and discuss an analogue of the problem for regular plane polygons.