A characterization of the polyhedral metrics on triangulated surfaces

Abstract

Given a triangulated surface, a polyhedral metric could be constructed by gluing Euclidean triangles edge-to-edge. We carefully describe the construction and prove that such a polyhedral metric is the only intrinsic metric on the glued surface that preserves the lengths of the curves on the Euclidean triangles. We also discuss the edge length coordinates of the Teichm\"uller space of the polyhedral metrics on a marked surface.