On the Dedekind tessellation

Abstract

The Dedekind tessellation -- the regular tessellation of the upper half-plane by the Mobius action of the modular group -- is usually viewed as a system of ideal triangles. We change the focus from triangles to circles and give their complete algebraic characterization with the help of a representation of the modular group acting by Lorentz transformations on Minkowski space. This interesting example of the interplay of geometry, group theory and number theory leads also to convenient algorithms for computer drawing of the Dedekind tessellation.