Spherical orthogonal ring patterns on surfaces and modified combinatorial total geodesic curvatures

Abstract

Orthogonal ring patterns are natural generalizations of circle patterns. Bobenko-Hoffmann-R\"orig and Bobenko established the variational principles of the classical combinatorial curvature for the Euclidean, hyperbolic and spherical orthogonal ring patterns. Bobenko-Hoffmann-R\"orig's work and Bobenko's work imply the rigidity of Euclidean and hyperbolic orthogonal ring patterns on closed surfaces, while the rigidity of spherical orthogonal ring patterns on closed surfaces is not known. In this paper, we study the spherical orthogonal ring patterns on closed surfaces with cellular decompositions satisfying certain necessary conditions. Using a modification of the combinatorial total geodesic curvature introduced by Nie in \cite{Nie}, we prove the rigidity of spherical orthogonal ring patterns on closed surfaces by variational principles.