Area of a hyperbolic geodesic polygon Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
In the curvature-minus-one Poincare half-plane model, a geodesic polygon with sides and interior angles has area
This is the polygonal Gauss-Bonnet theorem.
Elliptic element of PSL2(R) Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
A real Möbius transformation represented by with . It fixes a point of the Poincare half-plane model; an integral matrix of this type has trace or . In the Poincare disc model, moving its fixed point to zero makes it a rotation about zero.
Hyperbolic area 2026-10-05
The metric area of a hyperbolic surface. In the Poincare half-plane model the density is . A finite-area torsion-free quotient of genus with cusps has area by the Gauss-Bonnet theorem.
In the Poincare half-plane model, a hyperbolic circle of radius centred at is the Euclidean circle . Its Euclidean centre is shifted upward from its hyperbolic centre, and its Euclidean radius is . The lower height is positive. The formula follows by mapping the centre to zero in the Poincare disc model and using radial distance .
Hyperbolic surface Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
Isometry group of the Poincare half-plane Created 2026-09-29 Updated 2026-10-03
Every orientation-preserving isometry of the Poincare half-plane model lies in . Every orientation-reversing isometry is the composition of one of these with the hyperbolic reflection in the imaginary axis. Equivalently, the full isometry group consists of real Möbius and anti-Möbius transformations, modulo nonzero scalar matrices.
Parabolic element of PSL2(R) Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
A nonidentity real Möbius transformation represented by with . It has one ideal boundary fixed point and is conjugate to a nonzero translation on the Poincare half-plane model.
First obtain the hyperbolic circle in the upper half-plane. For centre , the fractional-linear map takes the Poincare half-plane model isometrically to the Poincare disc model, sending to zero. Direct differentiation transforms the metric to . A radial segment from zero to modulus has length . Any path to that modulus has at least this length, by ; thus it is the hyperbolic distance.
A circle of hyperbolic radius therefore satisfies
Squaring and rearranging gives
Hence it is a circle in Euclidean geometry, with Euclidean centre and radius . Its lowest point has height , so it stays entirely in the upper half-plane. The centres differ whenever : for example, the hyperbolic circle centred at has Euclidean centre , rather than .
For hyperbolic side-side-side congruence, use the standard fact that hyperbolic isometries act transitively on ordered point pairs with the same positive separation, and that reflection in a hyperbolic line is an isometry. Map to . The image of has prescribed distances from and from , just as does. There are at most two such points, interchanged by reflection in the line .
For completeness, normalize to points on the positive imaginary axis. Their distance circles are Euclidean circles with centres on that axis by the formula above. Subtracting their equations determines one height , and then the abscissa is determined up to its sign. Reflection interchanges these choices. Therefore either the chosen isometry or its composition with that reflection maps all three labelled vertices correctly. Equal three side lengths imply a hyperbolic isometry between the triangles.
Two sides and an unspecified equal angle do not suffice. Here is an explicit hyperbolic side-side-angle ambiguity. Fix the angle at to be , let and , and choose
Both are positive and distinct. The hyperbolic cosine rule at becomes
Setting , the condition is , whose two roots are . Construct each triangle from sides meeting at angle ; its opposite side is the same by the cosine rule. The triangles therefore share but have different third sides and cannot be isometric. If the common angle is specifically the included angle between the two given sides, the cosine rule determines the third side and side-side-side congruence does apply.
Use the Gaussian curvature normalization
of the Poincare half-plane model. This is a complete conformal metric, invariant under real Möbius transformations. Its quotient by the free effective principal congruence subgroup is again complete: a geodesic lifts to the complete covering plane and extends there for all time. Transporting the quotient metric through the biholomorphism supplies the required complete conformal metric.
A nonconstant closed geodesic corresponds to a hyperbolic Möbius transformation of , and its hyperbolic translation length is . Indeed its eigenvalues have magnitudes with , and its axis quotient has length . For in , implies . The odd numbers therefore have the same residue modulo four, and
A hyperbolic Möbius transformation must have , so its smallest possible absolute trace is six. It is attained by
Consequently
This element is primitive: a proper power would have a shorter root represented by a hyperbolic Möbius transformation, contradicting the trace bound. No essential simple closed geodesic exists on the three-punctured sphere, since every essential simple loop is peripheral and corresponds to a parabolic Möbius transformation. The minimizing closed geodesic is therefore nonsimple. Finally, the PDF leaves the numerical Gaussian curvature unspecified: the displayed length uses Gaussian curvature ; for Gaussian curvature , it is divided by .
The Euler-Lagrange equations for the kinetic Lagrangian are
Expanding and multiplying by the inverse metric gives the geodesic equation
The kinetic variational principle uses an affine parameter; the energy is constant along its solutions. Constant curves are also geodesics.
For the Poincare half-plane model, translation in gives the conserved quantity , and the energy is . If , the nonconstant geodesics are vertical lines, with . If ,
Writing and integrating yields . Thus nonconstant geodesic images are vertical lines or upper semicircles meeting the real axis orthogonally.
For the two specified points, the circle centre is and the radius is five:
For example, an affine unit-speed parametrization is , . The endpoints on the real axis are and , outside the hyperbolic surface.
Figure 1.
The upper-half-plane geodesic through the two specified points
.
The hyperbolic lines and are both perpendicular to . They are therefore ultraparallel hyperbolic lines, and is their unique common perpendicular of ultraparallel hyperbolic lines.
The common perpendicular realizes the minimum hyperbolic distance between two ultraparallel lines. This follows directly in the Poincare half-plane model after a Möbius transformation sends the two lines to concentric semicircles: the supplied distance formula is minimized along their common radial geodesic. The segment also joins the two lines, but it is different from in a nondegenerate quadrilateral. Hence
The group
acts on the Poincare half-plane model by
A direct calculation gives
Therefore
so every element of PSL2(R) is an isometry of the hyperbolic metric.
For a continuously differentiable curve in the Poincare half-plane model, its hyperbolic length is
The hyperbolic lines are the geodesics: vertical Euclidean lines and Euclidean semicircles whose centres lie on the real axis.
The unique hyperbolic line through distinct can be carried by an upper-half-plane Möbius transformation to the imaginary axis. Such transformations are isometries by hypothesis, so it is enough to consider endpoints and . Every joining curve satisfies
Equality holds for the monotone vertical parametrization
Thus the appropriately parametrized hyperbolic-line segment attains the infimum defining .
Now let have positive infimum distance. They neither intersect nor share an ideal endpoint: an intersection would give distance zero directly, while lines sharing an ideal endpoint approach one another arbitrarily closely near that endpoint. Hence they are ultraparallel. An upper-half-plane isometry puts them into the form
This is the normal form underlying the common perpendicular of ultraparallel hyperbolic lines. Put . Since
the metric becomes
Every path from to therefore has
Equality requires and monotone , so it is attained on the imaginary axis, which meets both semicircles orthogonally. Its intersection points and realize the distance
For a nonattained example, take the vertical lines and . They share the ideal endpoint at infinity. The horizontal segment at height has hyperbolic length , so their infimum distance is zero, but distinct points of always have positive distance. Hence the infimum is not attained.
The Poincare half-plane model is
with the orientation inherited from the complex plane. For
one has
These identities show directly that . The map is holomorphic with nonzero derivative, so it preserves orientation. The matrices and induce the same map, giving the action of PSL2(R).
Conversely, let be an orientation-preserving isometry. The PSL2(R) action is transitive on , so compose with an element taking back to . The resulting isometry fixes and acts on by an orientation-preserving orthogonal map, hence a rotation. The stabilizer of in PSL2(R),
realizes every such tangent rotation. An isometry is determined by its value and differential at one point because it preserves geodesics and the exponential map. Thus the composed isometry belongs to PSL2(R), and so does .
The map is an orientation-reversing isometry. Composing any orientation-reversing isometry with gives an orientation-preserving one, so
A hyperbolic line is a vertical Euclidean line or a semicircle orthogonal to the real axis. Its hyperbolic reflection is the unique orientation-reversing isometry that fixes every point of . If meet at angle , then
is the hyperbolic rotation about through angle . The generators satisfy
If in lowest terms, then has order and the generated group is the finite dihedral group of order . If is irrational, has infinite order and the generated group is the infinite dihedral group. In the degenerate case , the group has order two.
Every orientation-preserving isometry of the Poincare half-plane model has the form
with matrices identified up to multiplication by . Thus .
For , the affine map sends to , proving transitivity on points. Real translations and positive dilations act transitively on finite boundary points, while inversion exchanges and ; hence the action on is transitive. A hyperbolic line is determined by its unordered pair of boundary endpoints, and a real Möbius transformation can send any such pair to . Therefore is also transitive on hyperbolic lines.
In the Poincare half-plane model, the Riemannian metric
assigns to a smooth curve the length
The metric is conformal to the Euclidean metric, so hyperbolic and Euclidean angles agree. Its area element is
The two geodesics from and to infinity are the vertical lines and , while the third side is the unit semicircle. The triangle lies above that semicircle, so its area is
Its interior angles are , , and zero at the ideal vertex, and hence
Triangulating a geodesic polygon with sides into triangles gives
the area of a hyperbolic geodesic polygon and the polygonal Gauss-Bonnet theorem.