In this paper, we prove the global rigidity of sphere packings on 3-dimensional manifolds. This is a 3-dimensional analogue of the rigidity theorem of Andreev-Thurston and was conjectured by Cooper and Rivin. We also prove a global rigidity result using a combinatorial scalar curvature introduced by Ge and the author.

In this paper, we are concerned with upper bounds of eigenvalues of Laplace operator on compact Riemannian manifolds and finite graphs. While on the former the Laplace operator is generated by the Riemannian metric, on the latter it reflects combinatorial structure of a graph. Respectively, eigenvalues have many applications in geometry as well as in combinatorics and in other fields of mathematics. We develop a universal approach to upper bounds on both continuous and discrete structures based upon certain properties of the corresponding heat kernel. This approach is perhaps much more general than its realization here. Basically, we start with the following entries:(1) an underlying space M with a finite measure+;(2) a well-defined Laplace operator 2 on functions on M so that 2 is a self-adjoint operator in L2 (M,+) with a discrete spectrum;(3) if M has a boundary, then the boundary condition should be chosen so that it does not disrupt self-adjointness of 2 and is of dissipative nature;(4) a distance function dist (x, y) on M so that|{dist| 1 for an appropriate notion of gradient.

Computing uniformization maps for surfaces has been a challenging problem and has many practical applications. In this paper, we provide a theoretically rigorous algorithm to compute such maps via combinatorial Calabi flow for vertex scaling of polyhedral metrics on surfaces, which is an analogue of the combinatorial Yamabe flow introduced by Luo (Commun Contemp Math 6(5):765–780, 2004). To handle the singularies along the combinatorial Calabi flow, we do surgery on the flow by flipping. Using the discrete conformal theory established in Gu et al. (J Differ Geom 109(3):431–466, 2018; J Differ Geom 109(2):223–256, 2018), we prove that for any initial Euclidean or hyperbolic polyhedral metric on a closed surface, the combinatorial Calabi flow with surgery exists for all time and converges exponentially fast after finite number of surgeries. The convergence is independent of the combinatorial structure of the initial triangulation on the surface.

Inversive distance circle packing metric was introduced by P Bowers and K Stephenson as a generalization of Thurston’s circle packing metric. They conjectured that the inversive distance circle packings are rigid. For nonnegative inversive distance, Guo proved the infinitesimal rigidity and then Luo proved the global rigidity. In this paper, based on an observation of Zhou, we prove this conjecture for inversive distance in (−1, +∞)by variational principles. We also study the global rigidity of a combinatorial curvature with respect to the inversive distance circle packing metrics where the inversive distance is in (−1, +∞).

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