Combinatorial Calabi flows on surfaces with boundary

Abstract

Motivated by Luo's combinatorial Yamabe flow on closed surfaces \cite{L1} and Guo's combinatorial Yamabe flow on surfaces with boundary \cite{Guo}, we introduce combinatorial Calabi flow on ideally triangulated surfaces with boundary, aiming at finding hyperbolic metrics on surfaces with totally geodesic boundaries of given lengths. Then we prove the long time existence and global convergence of combinatorial Calabi flow on surfaces with boundary. We further introduce fractional combinatorial Calabi flow on surfaces with boundary, which unifies and generalizes the combinatorial Yamabe flow and the combinatorial Calabi flow on surfaces with boundary. The long time existence and global convergence of fractional combinatorial Calabi flow are also proved. These combinatorial curvature flows provide effective algorithms to construct hyperbolic surfaces with totally geodesic boundaries with prescribed lengths.