Paper 4, Section II, G

Geometry | Part IB, 2017

What is a hyperbolic line in (a) the disc model (b) the upper half-plane model of the hyperbolic plane? What is the hyperbolic distance d(P,Q)d(P, Q) between two points P,QP, Q in the hyperbolic plane? Show that if γ\gamma is any continuously differentiable curve with endpoints PP and QQ then its length is at least d(P,Q)d(P, Q), with equality if and only if γ\gamma is a monotonic reparametrisation of the hyperbolic line segment joining PP and QQ.

What does it mean to say that two hyperbolic lines L,LL, L^{\prime} are (a) parallel (b) ultraparallel? Show that LL and LL^{\prime} are ultraparallel if and only if they have a common perpendicular, and if so, then it is unique.

A horocycle is a curve in the hyperbolic plane which in the disc model is a Euclidean circle with exactly one point on the boundary of the disc. Describe the horocycles in the upper half-plane model. Show that for any pair of horocycles there exists a hyperbolic line which meets both orthogonally. For which pairs of horocycles is this line unique?

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