arXiv research

Harmonic and minimal great circle fibrations have special Gauss maps.

Classifies surfaces with great and small circles through each point.

New findings on great circle fibrations and contact structures on odd spheres.

We investigate great circle links in the three-sphere, the class of links where each component is a great circle. Using the geometry of their complements, we classify such links up to five components. For any two-bridge knot complement, there is a finite cover that is the complement of a link of great circles in $S^3$.…

Given any smooth fibration of the unit 3-sphere by great circles, we show that the distribution of 2-planes orthogonal to the great circle fibres is a tight contact structure, a fact well known in the special case of the Hopf fibrations. The proof expresses hypothesis and conclusion as differential inequalities involvi…

We construct an explicit diffeomorphism taking any fibration of a sphere by great circles into the Hopf fibration, using elementary geometry--indeed the diffeomorphism is a local (differential) invariant, algebraic in derivatives.

In a 1983 paper with Frank Warner, we proved that the space of all great circle fibrations of the 3-sphere S^3 deformation retracts to the subspace of Hopf fibrations, and so has the homotopy type of a pair of disjoint two-spheres. Since that time, no generalization of this result to higher dimensions has been found, a…

We show that all two-bridge knot and link complements are virtually fibered. We also show that spherical Montesinos knot and link complements are virtually fibered. This is accomplished by showing that such knot complements are finitely covered by great circle link complements.

Study spherical curves with curvature dependent on distance to a great circle.

We consider a closed orientable Riemannian 3-manifold $(M,g)$ and a vector field $X$ with unit norm whose integral curves are geodesics of $g$. Any such vector field determines naturally a 2-plane bundle contained in the kernel of the contact form of the geodesic flow of $g$. We study when this 2-plane bundle remains i…

Heinz Hopf's famous fibrations of the 2n+1-sphere by great circles, the 4n+3-sphere by great 3-spheres, and the 15-sphere by great 7-spheres have a number of interesting properties. Besides providing the first examples of homotopically nontrivial maps from one sphere to another sphere of lower dimension, they all share…

For each integer m>1 and l>0 we construct a pair of compact embedded minimal surfaces of genus 1+4m(m-1)l. These surfaces desingularize the m Clifford tori meeting each other along a great circle at the angle of π/m. They are invariant under a finite group of screw motions and have no reflection symmetry across a great…

We deal with minimal surfaces in the unit sphere $S^3$, which are one-parameter families of circles. Minimal surfaces in $\R^3$ foliated by circles were first investigated by Riemann, and a hundred years later Lawson constructed examples of such surfaces in $S^3$. We prove that in $S^3$ there are only two types of mini…

The Funk-Minkowski transform and spherical convolution reconstruct functions and vector fields on the sphere.

The paper extends Gluck and Warner's result on fibrations of spheres by great subspheres.

A soft presentation of hyperbolic spaces, free of differential apparatus, is offered. Fifth Euclid's postulate in such spaces is overthrown and, among other things, it is proved that spheres (equipped with great-circle distances) and hyperbolic and Euclidean spaces are the only locally compact geodesic (i.e., convex) m…

We give necessary conditions on complete embedded \cmc surfaces with three or four ends subject to reflection symmetries. The respective submoduli spaces are two-dimensional varieties in the moduli spaces of general \cmc surfaces. We characterize fundamental domains of our \cmc surfaces by associated great circle polyg…

New minimal surfaces desingularize three Clifford tori, proving uniqueness and characterizing them.

Given a Hopf fibration of a round sphere by parallel great subspheres, we prove that the projection map to the base space is, up to isometries of domain and range, the unique Lipschitz constant minimizer in its homotopy class. Similarly, given a Hopf fibration of a round sphere by parallel great circles, we view a unit…

I classify the Finsler structures on the 2-sphere that have constant Finsler-Gauss curvature and whose geodesics are the great circles. Modulo diffeomorphism, there is a 2-parameter family of such Finsler structures, only one of which is homogeneous or symmetric, namely the Riemannian one. I discuss the history of the …

Ricci flow deforms the Riemannian metric proportionally to the curvature, such that the curvature evolves according to a heat diffusion process and eventually becomes constant everywhere. Ricci flow has demonstrated its great potential by solving various problems in many fields, which can be hardly handled by alternati…

We study generalized Killing spinors on the standard sphere $\mathbb{S}^3$, which turn out to be related to Lagrangian embeddings in the nearly Kähler manifold $S^3\times S^3$ and to great circle flows on $\mathbb{S}^3$. Using our methods we generalize a well known result of Gluck and Gu concerning divergence-free geod…

Contact structures are induced by nondegenerate skew fibrations of R^3.

Sharp chord-arc estimates for curve shortening flow on spheres.

We extend the methods of Davis-Januszkiewicz-Lafont to provide a new obstruction to smooth Riemannian metric with non-positive sectional curvature. We construct examples of locally CAT(0) 4-manifolds $M$, whose universal covers satisfy isolated flats condition and contain 2-dimensional flats with the property that $\sq…

We obtain uncountably many periodic solutions to the singular Yamabe problem on a round sphere, that blow up along a great circle. These are (complete) constant scalar curvature metrics on the complement of $S^1$ inside $S^m$, $m\geq 5$, that are conformal to the round (incomplete) metric and "periodic" in the sense of…

A fibration of a Riemannian manifold is fiberwise homogeneous if there are isometries of the manifold onto itself, taking any given fiber to any other one, and preserving fibers. Examples are fibrations of Euclidean n-space by parallel n-planes, and the Hopf fibrations of the round n-sphere by great n-spheres. In this …

The study proves rigidity and non-rigidity of spherical caps in mean curvature.

The paper constructs solutions to a critical Dirac equation on spheres.

We show that on a surface locally every affine torsion-free connection is projectively equivalent to a Weyl connection. First, this is done using exterior differential system theory. Second, this is done by showing that the solutions of the relevant PDE are in one-to-one correspondence with the sections of the `twistor…

No minimizer exists for certain spherical metrics with edge-cones.

Two classification theorems for Willmore surfaces in S² × S².

Let $Σ$ be a hypersurface in an $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold $M$, $n\geqslant 2$. We study the isometric extension problem for isometric immersions $f:Σ\to\mathbb R^n$, where $\mathbb R^n$ is equipped with the Euclidean standard metric. We prove a general curvature obstruction to the existence of merely differen…

EKH adds metrics to knot theory, enabling more detailed analysis.

The stick index of a knot is the least number of line segments required to build the knot in space. We define two analogous 2-dimensional invariants, the planar stick index, which is the least number of line segments in the plane to build a projection, and the spherical stick index, which is the least number of great c…

Many important equations of mathematical physics arise geometrically as geodesic equations on Lie groups. In this paper, we study an example of a geodesic equation, the two-component Hunter-Saxton (2HS) system, that displays a number of unique geometric features. We show that 2HS describes the geodesic flow on a manifo…

Synthetic construction of Hopf fibration in 4D space.

The bridge index and superbridge index of a knot are important invariants in knot theory. We define the bridge map of a knot conformation, which is closely related to these two invariants, and interpret it in terms of the tangent indicatrix of the knot conformation. Using the concepts of dual and derivative curves of s…

The paper finds circle packings with specific curvatures in hyperbolic geometry.

Study generates infinite circle packings with a specific property.

Properness proven for circle packings and Delaunay patterns on complex projective structures.

The paper extends Descartes' circle theorem to n-flower configurations using hyperbolic geometry.

The paper explores universal circles for Anosov foliations and their uniqueness.

Solves Apollonius' problem using oriented circles and inversive geometry.

Link projections with the same circle arrangement can be transformed by specific moves.

Proves rigidity of circle packings in the plane, generalizing previous work.

A 1-parameter family of Steiner chains has constant curvature moments.

Paper proves a discrete Schwarz-Pick lemma for generalized circle packings.