The previous post was about triangles on a sphere. This post will be about triangles on a pseudosphere.
A pseudosphere looks something like the bell of a trumpet or a trombone.
Here’s a plot of a pseudosphere.
This was created in Mathematica with the code
ParametricPlot3D[
{
Cos[p] Sech[t],
-Sin[p] Sech[t],
t - Tanh[t]
},
{t, 0, 4},
{p, 0, 2 Pi}
]
The pseudosphere has constant negative curvature just as the sphere has constant positive curvature.
By curvature I mean specifically Gaussian curvature, the product of the sectional curvature in orthogonal directions at each point. A sphere curves the same way in all directions. A pseudosphere curves opposite ways in different directions. Coordinate lines through a point are convex in one direction and concave in another. Their sectional curvatures have opposite signs and so their product is negative.
A spherical triangle is formed by great circles connecting the vertices of the triangles. Great circles are the geodesics on a sphere.
A pseudospherical triangle is a triangle formed by geodesics on the pseudosphere. These are the “straight” lines in the hyperbolic geometry of the surface.
On a sphere, the interior angles of a triangle add up to more than π, and in fact the amount by which the sum of the angles exceeds π is proportional to the area of the triangle.
On a pseudosphere, the interior angles of a triangle add up to less than π. And just as in the case of the sphere, the difference between the sum of the angles and π, now negative, is proportional to the area. This result was discovered by Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777).
On a sphere or a pseudosphere, the interior angles of a small triangle add up to nearly π. As triangles get larger, the sum increases on a sphere but decreases on a pseudosphere.
The general principle behind both of these cases is the local Gauss-Bonnet theorem. For any surface, let T be triangle whose sides are geodesics. Then the integral of the Gaussian curvature over T is equal to the sum of the interior angles of T minus π.
When a surface has constant curvature, the integral of curvature over a region is proportional to the area of the region. So on a sphere or pseudosphere, the area of a geodesic triangle is proportional to the sum of the interior angles minus π.
The local Gauss-Bonnet theorem holds when the sides of a triangle are not geodesics, but in that case the theorem has an extra term, the integral of the geodesic curvature along the sides. Since the geodesic curvature of a geodesic is zero, this term drops out for geodesic triangles.