A spherical polyhedral surface is a triangulated surface obtained by isometric gluing of spherical triangles. For instance, the boundary of a generic convex polytope in the 3-sphere is a spherical polyhedral surface. This paper investigates these surfaces from the point of view of inner angles. A rigidity result is obtained. A characterization of spherical polyhedral surfaces in terms of the triangulation and the angle assignment is established.

We investigate the rigidity of hyperbolic cone metrics on 3manifolds which are isometric gluing of ideal and hyperideal tetrahedra in hyperbolic spaces. These metrics will be called ideal and hyperideal hyperbolic polyhedral metrics. It is shown that a hyperideal hyperbolic polyhedral metric is determined up to isometry by its curvature and a decorated ideal hyperbolic polyhedral metric is determined up to isometry and change of decorations by its curvature. The main tool used in the proof is the Fenchel dual of the volume function.

Given a finite set of r points in a closed surface of genus r , we consider the torsion elements in the mapping class group of the surface leaving the finite set invariant. We show that the torsion elements generate the mapping class group if and only if r for some integer r .

It is shown that every non-compact hyperbolic manifold of finite volume has a finite cover admitting a geodesic ideal triangulation. Also, every hyperbolic manifold of finite volume with non-empty, totally geodesic boundary has a finite regular cover which has a geodesic partially truncated triangulation. The proofs use an extension of a result due to Long and Niblo concerning the separability of peripheral subgroups.

We propose a finite-dimensional variational principle on triangulated 3-manifolds so that its critical points are related to solutions to Thurstons gluing equation and Hakens normal surface equation. The action functional is the volume.