Construction of continuum from a discrete surface by its iterated subdivisions

Abstract

Given a trivalent graph in the 3-dimensional Euclidean space, we call it a discrete surface because it has a tangent space at each vertex determined by its neighbor vertices. To abstract a continuum object hidden in the discrete surface, we introduce a subdivision method by applying the Goldberg-Coxeter subdivision and discuss the convergence of a sequence of discrete surfaces defined inductively by the subdivision. We also study the limit set as the continuum geometric object associated with the given discrete surface.