Toric section

Last updated

A toric section is an intersection of a plane with a torus, just as a conic section is the intersection of a plane with a cone. Special cases have been known since antiquity, and the general case was studied by Jean Gaston Darboux. [1]

Contents

Mathematical formulae

In general, toric sections are fourth-order (quartic) plane curves [1] of the form

Spiric sections

A special case of a toric section is the spiric section, in which the intersecting plane is parallel to the rotational symmetry axis of the torus. They were discovered by the ancient Greek geometer Perseus in roughly 150 BC. [2] Well-known examples include the hippopede and the Cassini oval and their relatives, such as the lemniscate of Bernoulli.

Villarceau circles

Another special case is the Villarceau circles, in which the intersection is a circle despite the lack of any of the obvious sorts of symmetry that would entail a circular cross-section. [3]

General toric sections

More complicated figures such as an annulus can be created when the intersecting plane is perpendicular or oblique to the rotational symmetry axis.

Related Research Articles

In mathematics, analytic geometry, also known as coordinate geometry or Cartesian geometry, is the study of geometry using a coordinate system. This contrasts with synthetic geometry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klein bottle</span> Non-orientable mathematical surface

In mathematics, the Klein bottle is an example of a non-orientable surface; that is, informally, a one-sided surface which, if traveled upon, could be followed back to the point of origin while flipping the traveler upside down. More formally, the Klein bottle is a two-dimensional manifold on which one cannot define a normal vector at each point that varies continuously over the whole manifold. Other related non-orientable surfaces include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. While a Möbius strip is a surface with a boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary. For comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parabola</span> Plane curve: conic section

In mathematics, a parabola is a plane curve which is mirror-symmetrical and is approximately U-shaped. It fits several superficially different mathematical descriptions, which can all be proved to define exactly the same curves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sphere</span> Set of points equidistant from a center

A sphere is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. Formally, a sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three-dimensional space. That given point is the center of the sphere, and r is the sphere's radius. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the ancient Greek mathematicians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Group theory</span> Branch of mathematics that studies the properties of groups

In abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces, can all be seen as groups endowed with additional operations and axioms. Groups recur throughout mathematics, and the methods of group theory have influenced many parts of algebra. Linear algebraic groups and Lie groups are two branches of group theory that have experienced advances and have become subject areas in their own right.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Torus</span> Doughnut-shaped surface of revolution

In geometry, a torus is a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three-dimensional space one full revolution about an axis that is coplanar with the circle. The main types of toruses include ring toruses, horn toruses, and spindle toruses. A ring torus is sometimes colloquially referred to as a donut or doughnut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyperboloid</span> Unbounded quadric surface

In geometry, a hyperboloid of revolution, sometimes called a circular hyperboloid, is the surface generated by rotating a hyperbola around one of its principal axes. A hyperboloid is the surface obtained from a hyperboloid of revolution by deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation.

In mathematics, a degenerate case is a limiting case of a class of objects which appears to be qualitatively different from the rest of the class, and the term degeneracy is the condition of being a degenerate case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surface of revolution</span> Surface created by rotating a curve about an axis

A surface of revolution is a surface in Euclidean space created by rotating a curve one full revolution around an axis of rotation . The volume bounded by the surface created by this revolution is the solid of revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poincaré half-plane model</span> Upper-half plane model of hyperbolic non-Euclidean geometry

In non-Euclidean geometry, the Poincaré half-plane model is the upper half-plane, denoted below as H, together with a metric, the Poincaré metric, that makes it a model of two-dimensional hyperbolic geometry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">600-cell</span> Four-dimensional analog of the icosahedron

In geometry, the 600-cell is the convex regular 4-polytope (four-dimensional analogue of a Platonic solid) with Schläfli symbol {3,3,5}. It is also known as the C600, hexacosichoron and hexacosihedroid. It is also called a tetraplex (abbreviated from "tetrahedral complex") and a polytetrahedron, being bounded by tetrahedral cells.

In algebraic geometry, a toric variety or torus embedding is an algebraic variety containing an algebraic torus as an open dense subset, such that the action of the torus on itself extends to the whole variety. Some authors also require it to be normal. Toric varieties form an important and rich class of examples in algebraic geometry, which often provide a testing ground for theorems. The geometry of a toric variety is fully determined by the combinatorics of its associated fan, which often makes computations far more tractable. For a certain special, but still quite general class of toric varieties, this information is also encoded in a polytope, which creates a powerful connection of the subject with convex geometry. Familiar examples of toric varieties are affine space, projective spaces, products of projective spaces and bundles over projective space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Villarceau circles</span> Intersection of a torus and a plane

In geometry, Villarceau circles are a pair of circles produced by cutting a torus obliquely through its center at a special angle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hippopede</span> Plane curves of the form (x² + y²)² = cx² + dy²

In geometry, a hippopede is a plane curve determined by an equation of the form

In mathematics, enumerative geometry is the branch of algebraic geometry concerned with counting numbers of solutions to geometric questions, mainly by means of intersection theory.

Perseus was an ancient Greek geometer, who invented the concept of spiric sections, in analogy to the conic sections studied by Apollonius of Perga.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spiric section</span>

In geometry, a spiric section, sometimes called a spiric of Perseus, is a quartic plane curve defined by equations of the form

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Conic section</span> Curve from a cone intersecting a plane

A conic section, conic or a quadratic curve is a curve obtained from a cone's surface intersecting a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is a special case of the ellipse, though it was sometimes called as a fourth type. The ancient Greek mathematicians studied conic sections, culminating around 200 BC with Apollonius of Perga's systematic work on their properties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Symmetry (geometry)</span> Geometrical property

In geometry, an object has symmetry if there is an operation or transformation that maps the figure/object onto itself. Thus, a symmetry can be thought of as an immunity to change. For instance, a circle rotated about its center will have the same shape and size as the original circle, as all points before and after the transform would be indistinguishable. A circle is thus said to be symmetric under rotation or to have rotational symmetry. If the isometry is the reflection of a plane figure about a line, then the figure is said to have reflectional symmetry or line symmetry; it is also possible for a figure/object to have more than one line of symmetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dupin's theorem</span>

In differential geometry Dupin's theorem, named after the French mathematician Charles Dupin, is the statement:

References

  1. 1 2 Sym, Antoni (2009), "Darboux's greatest love", Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, 42 (40): 404001, doi:10.1088/1751-8113/42/40/404001 .
  2. Brieskorn, Egbert; Knörrer, Horst (1986), "Origin and generation of curves", Plane algebraic curves, Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, pp. 2–65, doi:10.1007/978-3-0348-5097-1, ISBN   3-7643-1769-8, MR   0886476 .
  3. Schoenberg, I. J. (1985), "A direct approach to the Villarceau circles of a torus", Simon Stevin, 59 (4): 365–372, MR   0840858 .