Hyperbolic geometry | Spheres | Polyhedra
Ideal polyhedron
In three-dimensional hyperbolic geometry, an ideal polyhedron is a convex polyhedron all of whose vertices are ideal points, points "at infinity" rather than interior to three-dimensional hyperbolic space. It can be defined as the convex hull of a finite set of ideal points. An ideal polyhedron has ideal polygons as its faces, meeting along lines of the hyperbolic space. The Platonic solids and Archimedean solids have ideal versions, with the same combinatorial structure as their more familiar Euclidean versions. Several uniform hyperbolic honeycombs divide hyperbolic space into cells of these shapes, much like the familiar division of Euclidean space into cubes. However, not all polyhedra can be represented as ideal polyhedra – a polyhedron can be ideal only when it can be represented in Euclidean geometry with all its vertices on a circumscribed sphere. Using linear programming, it is possible to test whether a given polyhedron has an ideal version, in polynomial time. Every two ideal polyhedra with the same number of vertices have the same surface area, and it is possible to calculate the volume of an ideal polyhedron using the Lobachevsky function. The surface of an ideal polyhedron forms a hyperbolic manifold, topologically equivalent to a punctured sphere, and every such manifold forms the surface of a unique ideal polyhedron. (Wikipedia).
