Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2006/ii/paper-1/12f/solution

In curvature-minus-one polar coordinates the hyperbolic metric is . Thus the area element is , giving
It is asymptotic to .
For a usual locally finite tessellation with compact congruent tiles of nonempty interior, let their diameter be at most and choose in each a congruently placed interior ball of radius . These balls have disjoint interiors. The number of tiles meeting a geodesic segment of length one is uniformly bounded: their ball centres lie in a ball of radius , and the disjoint -balls lie in the larger ball of radius . Comparing areas supplies a constant . A path of length , divided into at most such segments, therefore crosses at most tiles. A small generic perturbation avoids vertices if steps are defined by crossing sides.
Consequently the union of tiles at most steps from the initial tile contains a metric ball of radius for fixed . If is tile area, their number is at least , an exponential lower bound. Conversely any chain of adjacent tiles lies in about a point in the initial tile; the interiors are disjoint, so . Thus is bounded above and below by positive exponential functions of . No precise common growth exponent is claimed.
An explicit example is the regular right-angled pentagon tiling : reflect a regular hyperbolic pentagon with all angles in its sides. Four pentagons meet at each vertex, and their interiors tile the plane. Its tiles have area by the hyperbolic polygon area formula. The compactness and ordinary local finiteness assumptions exclude pathological decompositions with degenerate tiles.

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