Associate family

Last updated
Animation showing the deformation of a helicoid into a catenoid as th changes. Helicatenoid.gif
Animation showing the deformation of a helicoid into a catenoid as θ changes.

In differential geometry, the associate family (or Bonnet family) of a minimal surface is a one-parameter family of minimal surfaces which share the same Weierstrass data. That is, if the surface has the representation

Differential geometry branch of mathematics

Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra to study problems in geometry. The theory of plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space formed the basis for development of differential geometry during the 18th century and the 19th century.

Pierre Ossian Bonnet French mathematician

Pierre Ossian Bonnet was a French mathematician. He made some important contributions to the differential geometry of surfaces, including the Gauss–Bonnet theorem.

Minimal surface surface that locally minimizes its area

In mathematics, a minimal surface is a surface that locally minimizes its area. This is equivalent to having zero mean curvature.

the family is described by

For θ = π/2 the surface is called the conjugate of the θ = 0 surface. [1]

The transformation can be viewed as locally rotating the principal curvature directions. The surface normals of a point with a fixed ζ remains unchanged as θ changes; the point itself moves along an ellipse.

Principal curvature at a given point of a surface, one of the two eigenvalues of the shape operator at the point

In differential geometry, the two principal curvatures at a given point of a surface are the eigenvalues of the shape operator at the point. They measure how the surface bends by different amounts in different directions at that point.

Some examples of associate surface families are: the catenoid and helicoid family, the Schwarz P, Schwarz D and gyroid family, and the Scherk's first and second surface family. The Enneper surface is conjugate to itself: it is left invariant as θ changes.

Catenoid type of surface in topology, arising by rotating a catenary curve about an axis

A catenoid is a type of surface, arising by rotating a catenary curve about an axis. It is a minimal surface, meaning that it occupies the least area when bounded by a closed space. It was formally described in 1744 by the mathematician Leonhard Euler.

Helicoid mathematical shape

The helicoid, after the plane and the catenoid, is the third minimal surface to be known.

Gyroid

A gyroid is an infinitely connected triply periodic minimal surface discovered by Alan Schoen in 1970.

Conjugate surfaces have the property that any straight line on a surface maps to a planar geodesic on its conjugate surface and vice versa. If a patch of one surface is bounded by a straight line, then the conjugate patch is bounded by a planar symmetry line. This is useful for constructing minimal surfaces by going to the conjugate space: being bound by planes is equivalent to being bound by a polygon. [2]

There are counterparts to the associate families of minimal surfaces in higher-dimensional spaces and manifolds. [3]

Related Research Articles

Sphere round geometrical and circular object in three-dimensional space; special case of spheroid

A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space that is the surface of a completely round ball.

Spherical coordinate system

In mathematics, a spherical coordinate system is a coordinate system for three-dimensional space where the position of a point is specified by three numbers: the radial distance of that point from a fixed origin, its polar angle measured from a fixed zenith direction, and the azimuth angle of its orthogonal projection on a reference plane that passes through the origin and is orthogonal to the zenith, measured from a fixed reference direction on that plane. It can be seen as the three-dimensional version of the polar coordinate system.

In mechanics and geometry, the 3D rotation group, often denoted SO(3), is the group of all rotations about the origin of three-dimensional Euclidean space R3 under the operation of composition. By definition, a rotation about the origin is a transformation that preserves the origin, Euclidean distance, and orientation. Every non-trivial rotation is determined by its axis of rotation and its angle of rotation. Composing two rotations results in another rotation; every rotation has a unique inverse rotation; and the identity map satisfies the definition of a rotation. Owing to the above properties, the set of all rotations is a group under composition. Rotations are not commutative, making it a nonabelian group. Moreover, the rotation group has a natural structure as a manifold for which the group operations are smoothly differentiable; so it is in fact a Lie group. It is compact and has dimension 3.

Spherical harmonics special functions defined on the surface of a sphere

In mathematics and physical science, spherical harmonics are special functions defined on the surface of a sphere. They are often employed in solving partial differential equations that commonly occur in science. The spherical harmonics are a complete set of orthogonal functions on the sphere, and thus may be used to represent functions defined on the surface of a sphere, just as circular functions are used to represent functions on a circle via Fourier series. Like the sines and cosines in Fourier series, the spherical harmonics may be organized by (spatial) angular frequency, as seen in the rows of functions in the illustration on the right. Further, spherical harmonics are basis functions for SO(3), the group of rotations in three dimensions, and thus play a central role in the group theoretic discussion of SO(3).

Clausen function

In mathematics, the Clausen function, introduced by Thomas Clausen (1832), is a transcendental, special function of a single variable. It can variously be expressed in the form of a definite integral, a trigonometric series, and various other special functions. It is intimately connected with the polylogarithm, inverse tangent integral, polygamma function, Riemann zeta function, Dirichlet eta function, and Dirichlet beta function.

In mathematics—in particular, in multivariable calculus—a volume integral refers to an integral over a 3-dimensional domain, that is, it is a special case of multiple integrals. Volume integrals are especially important in physics for many applications, for example, to calculate flux densities.

Multiple integral definite integral over a multi-dimensional region of a function of several variables

The multiple integral is a definite integral of a function of more than one real variable, for example, f(x, y) or f(x, y, z). Integrals of a function of two variables over a region in R2 are called double integrals, and integrals of a function of three variables over a region of R3 are called triple integrals.

In complex analysis, functional analysis and operator theory, a Bergman space is a function space of holomorphic functions in a domain D of the complex plane that are sufficiently well-behaved at the boundary that they are absolutely integrable. Specifically, for 0 < p < ∞, the Bergman space Ap(D) is the space of all holomorphic functions in D for which the p-norm is finite:

Characteristic function (probability theory) real-valued random variable completely defines its probability distribution

In probability theory and statistics, the characteristic function of any real-valued random variable completely defines its probability distribution. If a random variable admits a probability density function, then the characteristic function is the Fourier transform of the probability density function. Thus it provides the basis of an alternative route to analytical results compared with working directly with probability density functions or cumulative distribution functions. There are particularly simple results for the characteristic functions of distributions defined by the weighted sums of random variables.

In physics and mathematics, the solid harmonics are solutions of the Laplace equation in spherical polar coordinates. There are two kinds: the regular solid harmonics , which vanish at the origin and the irregular solid harmonics , which are singular at the origin. Both sets of functions play an important role in potential theory, and are obtained by rescaling spherical harmonics appropriately:

Mild-slope equation The combined effects of diffraction and refraction for water waves propagating over variable depth and with lateral boundaries

In fluid dynamics, the mild-slope equation describes the combined effects of diffraction and refraction for water waves propagating over bathymetry and due to lateral boundaries—like breakwaters and coastlines. It is an approximate model, deriving its name from being originally developed for wave propagation over mild slopes of the sea floor. The mild-slope equation is often used in coastal engineering to compute the wave-field changes near harbours and coasts.

In mathematics, the ATS theorem is the theorem on the approximation of a trigonometric sum by a shorter one. The application of the ATS theorem in certain problems of mathematical and theoretical physics can be very helpful.

In probability theory and directional statistics, a wrapped probability distribution is a continuous probability distribution that describes data points that lie on a unit n-sphere. In one dimension, a wrapped distribution will consist of points on the unit circle. If φ is a random variate in the interval (-∞,∞) with probability density function p(φ), then z = e i φ will be a circular variable distributed according to the wrapped distribution pzw(z) and θ=arg(z) will be an angular variable in the interval (-π,π ] distributed according to the wrapped distribution pw.

The Fréedericksz transition is a phase transition in liquid crystals produced when a sufficiently strong electric or magnetic field is applied to a liquid crystal in an undistorted state. Below a certain field threshold the director remains undistorted. As the field value is gradually increased from this threshold, the director begins to twist until it's aligned with the field. In this fashion the Fréedericksz transition can occur in three different configurations known as the twist, bend, and splay geometries. The phase transition was first observed by Fréedericksz and Repiewa in 1927. In this first experiment of theirs, one of the walls of the cell was concave so as to produce a variation in thickness along the cell. The phase transition is named in honor of the Russian physicist Vsevolod Frederiks.

Wrapped Cauchy distribution

In probability theory and directional statistics, a wrapped Cauchy distribution is a wrapped probability distribution that results from the "wrapping" of the Cauchy distribution around the unit circle. The Cauchy distribution is sometimes known as a Lorentzian distribution, and the wrapped Cauchy distribution may sometimes be referred to as a wrapped Lorentzian distribution.

In mathematics, singular integral operators of convolution type are the singular integral operators that arise on Rn and Tn through convolution by distributions; equivalently they are the singular integral operators that commute with translations. The classical examples in harmonic analysis are the harmonic conjugation operator on the circle, the Hilbert transform on the circle and the real line, the Beurling transform in the complex plane and the Riesz transforms in Euclidean space. The continuity of these operators on L2 is evident because the Fourier transform converts them into multiplication operators. Continuity on Lp spaces was first established by Marcel Riesz. The classical techniques include the use of Poisson integrals, interpolation theory and the Hardy–Littlewood maximal function. For more general operators, fundamental new techniques, introduced by Alberto Calderón and Antoni Zygmund in 1952, were developed by a number of authors to give general criteria for continuity on Lp spaces. This article explains the theory for the classical operators and sketches the subsequent general theory.

In mathematics, the Douady–Earle extension, named after Adrien Douady and Clifford Earle, is a way of extending homeomorphisms of the unit circle in the complex plane to homeomorphisms of the closed unit disk, such that the extension is a diffeomorphism of the open disk. The extension is analytic on the open disk. The extension has an important equivariance property: if the homeomorphism is composed on either side with a Möbius transformation preserving the unit circle the extension is also obtained by composition with the same Möbius transformation. If the homeomorphism is quasisymmetric, the diffeomorphism is quasiconformal. An extension for quasisymmetric homeomorphisms had previously been given by Ahlfors and Arne Beurling; a different equivariant construction had been given in 1985 by Pekka Tukia. Equivariant extensions have important applications in Teichmüller theory, for example they lead to a quick proof of the contractibility of the Teichmüller space of a Fuchsian group.

In mathematics, the Radó–Kneser–Choquet theorem, named after Tibor Radó, Hellmuth Kneser and Gustave Choquet, states that the Poisson integral of a homeomorphism of the unit circle is a harmonic diffeomorphism of the open unit disk. The result was stated as a problem by Radó and solved shortly afterwards by Kneser in 1926. Choquet, unaware of the work of Radó and Kneser, rediscovered the result with a different proof in 1945. Choquet also generalized the result to the Poisson integral of a homeomorphism from the unit circle to a simple Jordan curve bounding a convex region.

In mathematics, the Neumann–Poincaré operator or Poincaré–Neumann operator, named after Carl Neumann and Henri Poincaré, is a non-self-adjoint compact operator introduced by Poincaré to solve boundary value problems for the Laplacian on bounded domains in Euclidean space. Within the language of potential theory it reduces the partial differential equation to an integral equation on the boundary to which the theory of Fredholm operators can be applied. The theory is particularly simple in two dimensions—the case treated in detail in this article—where it is related to complex function theory, the conjugate Beurling transform or complex Hilbert transform and the Fredholm eigenvalues of bounded planar domains.

In mathematics, singular integral operators on closed curves arise in problems in analysis, in particular complex analysis and harmonic analysis. The two main singular integral operators, the Hilbert transform and the Cauchy transform, can be defined for any smooth Jordan curve in the complex plane and are related by a simple algebraic formula. The Hilbert transform is an involution and the Cauchy transform an idempotent. The range of the Cauchy transform is the Hardy space of the bounded region enclosed by the Jordan curve. The theory for the original curve can be deduced from that on the unit circle, where, because of rotational symmetry, both operators are classical singular integral operators of convolution type. The Hilbert transform satisfies the jump relations of Plemelj and Sokhotski, which express the original function as the difference between the boundary values of holomorphic functions on the region and its complement. Singular integral operators have been studied on various classes of functions, including Hőlder spaces, Lp spaces and Sobolev spaces. In the case of L2 spaces—the case treated in detail below—other operators associated with the closed curve, such as the Szegő projection onto Hardy space and the Neumann–Poincaré operator, can be expressed in terms of the Cauchy transform and its adjoint.

References

  1. Matthias Weber, Classical Minimal Surfaces in Euclidean Space by Examples, in Global Theory of Minimal Surfaces: Proceedings of the Clay Mathematics Institute 2001 Summer School, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, California, June 25–July 27, 2001. American Mathematical Soc., 2005
  2. Hermann Karcher, Konrad Polthier, "Construction of Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces", Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 16 September 1996 vol. 354 no. 1715 2077–2104
  3. J.-H. Eschenburg, The Associated Family, Matematica Contemporanea, Vol 31, 1–12 2006