SIMPLICES OF MAXIMAL VOLUME OR MINIMAL TOTAL EDGE LENGTH IN HYPERBOLIC SPACE

Abstract

In this paper, we are mainly concerned with $n$ -dimensional simplices in hyperbolic space ${\bb H}^n$ . We will also consider simplices with ideal vertices, and we suggest that the reader keeps the Poincaré unit ball model of hyperbolic space in mind, in which the sphere at infinity ${\bb H}^n(\infty)$ corresponds to the bounding sphere of radius 1. It is known that all hyperbolic simplices (even the ideal ones) have finite volume. However, explicit calculation of their volume is generally a very difficult problem (see, for example, [1] or [16]). Our first theorem states that, amongst all simplices in a closed geodesic ball, the simplex of maximal volume is regular. We call a simplex regular if every permutation of its vertices can be realized by an isometry of ${\bb H}^n$ . A corresponding result for simplices in the sphere has been proved by Böröczky [4].