Suppose M is a m-dimensional submanifold without umbilic points in the (m+ p)-dimensional unit sphere S m+ p. Four basic invariants of M m under the Mbius transformation group of S m+ p are a symmetric positive definite 2-form g called the Mbius metric, a section B of the normal bundle called the Mbius second fundamental form, a 1-form called the Mbius form, and a symmetric (0, 2) tensor A called the Blaschke tensor. In the Mbius geometry of submanifolds, the most important examples of Mbius minimal submanifolds (also called Willmore submanifolds) are Willmore tori and Veronese submanifolds. In this paper, several fundamental inequalities of the Mbius geometry of submanifolds are established and the Mbius characterizations of Willmore tori and Veronese submanifolds are presented by using Mbius invariants.

We study the rigidity of polyhedral surfaces using variational principles. The action functionals are derived from the cosine laws. The main focus of this paper is on the cosine law for a nontriangular region bounded by three possibly disjoint geodesics. Several of these cosine laws were first discovered and used by Fenchel and Nielsen. By studying the derivative of the cosine laws, we discover a uniform approach to several variational principles on polyhedral surfaces with or without boundary. As a consequence, the work of Penner, Bobenko and Springborn and Thurston on rigidity of polyhedral surfaces and circle patterns are extended to a very general context.

The LaplaceBeltrami operator of a smooth Riemannian manifold is determined by the Riemannian metric. Conversely, the heat kernel constructed from the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the LaplaceBeltrami operator determines the Riemannian metric. This work proves the analogy on Euclidean polyhedral surfaces (triangle meshes), that the discrete heat kernel and the discrete Riemannian metric (unique up to a scaling) are mutually determined by each other. Given a Euclidean polyhedral surface, its Riemannian metric is represented as edge lengths, satisfying triangle inequalities on all faces. The LaplaceBeltrami operator is formulated using the cotangent formula, where the edge weight is defined as the sum of the cotangent of angles against the edge. We prove that the edge lengths can be determined by the edge weights unique up to a scaling using the variational approach.

This paper investigates several global rigidity issues for polyhedral surfaces including inversive distance circle packings. Inversive distance circle packings are polyhedral surfaces introduced by P Bowers and K Stephenson in [Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 170, no. 805, Amer. Math. Soc.(2004)] as a generalization of Andreev and Thurstons circle packing. They conjectured that inversive distance circle packings are rigid. We prove this conjecture using recent work of R Guo [Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 363 (2011) 47574776] on the variational principle associated to the inversive distance circle packing. We also show that each polyhedral metric on a triangulated surface is determined by various discrete curvatures that we introduced in [arXiv 0612.5714], verifying a conjecture in [arXiv 0612.5714]. As a consequence, we show that the discrete Laplacian operator determines a spherical polyhedral metric.

We prove theorems on the structure of the fundamental group of a compact riemannian manifold of non-positive curvature. In particular, a conjecture of J. Wolf [<i>J. Differential Geometry</i>, 2, 421-446 (1968)] is proved.