Rigidity of discrete conformal structures on surfaces

Abstract

In \cite{G3}, Glickenstein introduced the discrete conformal structures on polyhedral surfaces in an axiomatic approach from Riemannian geometry perspective. Glickenstein's discrete conformal structures include Thurston's circle packings, Bowers-Stephenson's inversive distance circle packings and Luo's vertex scalings as special cases. Glickenstein \cite{G5} further conjectured the rigidity of the discrete conformal structures on polyhedral surfaces. Glickenstein's conjecture includes Luo's conjecture on the rigidity of vertex scalings \cite{L1} and Bowers-Stephenson's conjecture on the rigidity of inversive distance circle packings \cite{BSt} as special cases. In this paper, we prove Glickenstein's conjecture using variational principles. This unifies and generalizes the well-known results of Luo \cite{L4} and Bobenko-Pinkall-Springborn \cite{BPS}. Our method provides a unified approach to similar problems. We further discuss the relationships of Glickenstein's discrete conformal structures on polyhedral surfaces and $3$-dimensional hyperbolic geometry. As a result, we obtain some new results on the convexities of the co-volume functions of some generalized $3$-dimensional hyperbolic tetrahedra.