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Concept
Schwarz triangle
Summary
In geometry, a Schwarz triangle, named after Hermann Schwarz, is a spherical triangle that can be used to tile a sphere (spherical tiling), possibly overlapping, through reflections in its edges. They were classified in .
These can be defined more generally as tessellations of the sphere, the Euclidean plane, or the hyperbolic plane. Each Schwarz triangle on a sphere defines a finite group, while on the Euclidean or hyperbolic plane they define an infinite group.
A Schwarz triangle is represented by three rational numbers (p q r), each representing the angle at a vertex. The value means the vertex angle is of the half-circle. "2" means a right triangle. When these are whole numbers, the triangle is called a Möbius triangle, and corresponds to a non-overlapping tiling, and the symmetry group is called a triangle group. In the sphere there are three Möbius triangles plus one one-parameter family; in the plane there are three Möbius triangles, while in hyperbolic space there is a three-parameter family of Möbius triangles, and no exceptional objects.
A fundamental domain triangle (p q r), with vertex angles , , and , can exist in different spaces depending on the value of the sum of the reciprocals of these integers:
This is simply a way of saying that in Euclidean space the interior angles of a triangle sum to pi, while on a sphere they sum to an angle greater than pi, and on hyperbolic space they sum to less.
A Schwarz triangle is represented graphically by a triangular graph. Each node represents an edge (mirror) of the Schwarz triangle. Each edge is labeled by a rational value corresponding to the reflection order, being π/vertex angle.
Order-2 edges represent perpendicular mirrors that can be ignored in this diagram. The Coxeter-Dynkin diagram represents this triangular graph with order-2 edges hidden.
A Coxeter group can be used for a simpler notation, as (p q r) for cyclic graphs, and (p q 2) = [p,q] for (right triangles), and (p 2 2) = [p]×[].
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