A Tour of Hyperbolic Geometry

Sarah Constantin
Yale University srconstantin@gmail.com

February 23, 2012

Sarah Constantin ()

Hyperbolic Geometry

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Non-Euclidean Geometry: Eldritch Horror?

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Euclidean Geometry

Plane geometry is dened by Euclids Five Axioms, from which all other geometric theorems are derived. Between any two points there is one straight line. A line segment can be extended to one line. There is one circle with any given center and radius. All right angles are equal to each other. Given a point and a line, there is exactly one line through the point parallel to the original line.

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Parallel Postulate

Since Ptolemys time, mathematicians had tried to prove the fth axiom (the parallel postulate) from the other four. In the 19th century, Janos Bolyai and Nikolai Lobachevsky tried rejecting the parallel postulate and constructing a form of geometry with innitely many parallel lines through a point. This is just as consistent as Euclidean geometry, but corresponds to geometry on a curved surface instead of a at plane. It became known as hyperbolic geometry.

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A crocheted hyperbolic surface

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Disc model of hyperbolic plane

The straight lines are semicircles; innity is the boundary of the disc.

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Upper half-plane model of the hyperbolic plane

The straight lines are semicircles.

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Hyperbolic vs. Euclidean triangles

In plane geometry, the angles in a triangle add to 180 degrees. But in hyperbolic geometry, the angles in a triangle add to less to 180 degrees. This corresponds to geometry, not on a at plane, but on a curved surface.

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Upper-Half Plane model

A straight line between two points is the circle passing through both that is perpendicular to the real axis. If the points are aligned vertically, the straight line is a vertical line. Note that two lines in hyperbolic space are either disjoint, intersect in a point, or intersect in two points. We can construct a family of Euclidean circles (hyperbolic lines) through a point that do not intersect a given hyperbolic line so the Parallel Postulate is not true in hyperbolic space.

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Distance

The hyperbolic distance between two points z1 , z2 in the upper half plane is dened to be the minimum of
t2 t1

x (t)2 + y (t)2 dt y

taken over all paths from t1 to t2 where (t) = x(t) + iy (t). One can calculate that the curve with shortest total distance between two points is a hyperbolic straight line, that is, a circle or a vertical line. So, just as in Euclidean geometry, the shortest distance between two points is a line. In particular, if the two points lie on a vertical line, the distance between them is log(y2 /y1 ).

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Isometries
An isometry is a bijection that preserves equal distances and equal angles. In the Euclidean plane, the isometries are rotation, translation, reection, and glide reection.

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In the hyperbolic plane, there are four types of isometries preserving the plane: Circle Inversion: x the circle or line and reect points across it. Hyperbolic Isometry: reect over two parallel (non-intersecting) semicircles Parabolic isometry: reect over two semicircles that meet at one point. Elliptic Isometry: reect over two overlapping semicircles.

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Moebius Transformations

As a matter of fact, all of the above isometries are of the form T (z) = az + b cz + d

where z is a point in the upper half plane and a, b, c, d are real numbrs such that ad bc = 1.

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Moebius transformations are isometries

Its enough to show that if A(z) = w =
az+b cz+d

then

|dw | |dz| = Im(w ) Im(z) or |dw | Im(w ) = |dz| Im(z)

The left-hand side is | (cz + d)a (az + b)c ad bc 1 |=| |= 2 2 (cz + d) (cz + d) (cz + d)2

The right-hand side, after some calculations, also turns out to be 1 (cz + d)2 So distances are preserved.
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Moebius Transformations as Matrices

We can associate a Moebius transformation az + b cz + d with a matrix a b c d The product of two such matrices is the composition of two Moebius transformations. The inverse of one of these matrices also corresponds to a Moebius transformation. So these matrices form a group.

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Whats really going on here? The Riemann Sphere

You can imagine the plane as a sphere with a point at innity, innitely far from the origin. What does this really mean? If you imagine the unit sphere, you can make a map between the sphere and the plane by stereographic projection. Let the sphere sit on top of the plane, with the north pole at (0, 0, 1), and for every point on the sphere, draw a line from the north pole to that point and extend it to a point on the plane. This is a one-to-one map from the sphere to the plane the only point without an image is the North Pole, which becomes the point at innity.

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Stereographic Projection

The formulae for this map and its inverse are (z) = (u + iv ) = (rz, 1 r ) = (ru, rv , 1 r ) (u, v , h) = where r =
2 . 1+|z|2

u + iv 1h

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Sphere and Plane

The image of a circle on the sphere not passing through the north pole is a circle on the plane. The image of a circle on the sphere passing through the north pole is a line on the plane. The upper-half plane corresponds to az+b the eastern hemisphere. The maps of the form cz+d are conformal (angle-preserving) mappings of the sphere to itself that can be projected onto the upper half-plane.

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Types of Moebius Transformations

Dilation: 1/ 0 0 Translation: 1 0 1 Inversion: 0 1 1 0 Dilation is lifting or lowering the Riemann sphere; translation is shifting it; inversion is rolling it.

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