The hanging chain problem in the sphere and in the hyperbolic plane

Abstract

In this paper, the notion of the catenary curve in the sphere and in the hyperbolic plane is introduced. In both spaces, a catenary is defined as the shape of a hanging chain when its potential energy is determined by the distance to a given geodesic of the space. Several characterizations of the catenary are established in terms of the curvature of the curve and of the angle that its unit normal makes with a vector field of the ambient space. Furthermore, in the hyperbolic plane, we extend the concept of catenary substituting the reference geodesic by a horocycle or the hyperbolic distance by the horocycle distance.