The actions of a half Virasoro algebra have appeared in many integrable systems. In this paper we show that there is an action of a (Half) Virasoro algebra on the space of (2+0) harmonic maps into a Lie group. This action is generated by a natural action on the frames. A similar calculation on the space-time (1+1) harmonic maps yields formulas generated by John Schwarz.

We use a variational principle to prove an existence and uniqueness theorem for planar weighted Delaunay triangulations (with non-intersecting site-circles) with prescribed combinatorial type and circle intersection angles. Such weighted Delaunay triangulations may be interpreted as images of hyperbolic polyhedra with one vertex on and the remaining vertices beyond the infinite boundary of hyperbolic space. Thus, the main theorem states necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of such polyhedra with prescribed combinatorial type and dihedral angles. More generally, we consider weighted Delaunay triangulations in piecewise flat surfaces, allowing cone singularities with prescribed cone angles in the vertices. The material presented here extends work by Rivin on Delaunay triangulations and ideal polyhedra.

In the first paper of this series, “Electrodynamics and the Gauss Linking Integral on the 3-sphere and in Hyperbolic 3-space,” we developed a steady-state version of classical electrodynamics in these two spaces, including explicit formulas for the vector-valued Green’s operator, explicit formulas of Biot-Savart type for the magnetic field, and a corresponding Amp`ere’s Law contained in Maxwell’s equations, and then used these to obtain explicit inte- gral formulas for the linking number of two disjoint closed curves. In this second paper, we obtain integral formulas for twisting, writhing, and helicity, and prove that link = twist + writhe on the 3-sphere and in hyperbolic 3-space. We then use these results to derive upper bounds for the helicity of vector fields and lower bounds for the first eigenvalue of the curl operator on subdomains of these two spaces. An announcement of these results, and a hint of their proofs, can be found in the Math ArXiv, math.GT/0406276, while an expanded version of the first paper, with full proofs, can be found at math.GT/0510388.

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We give a shorter proof of the existence of nontrivial closed minimal hypersurfaces in closed smooth (n + 1)-dimensional Riemannian manifolds, a theorem proved first by Pitts for 2 ≤ n ≤ 5 and extended later by Schoen and Simon to any n.