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4.8 Stereographic Projection

The document discusses stereographic projection, which is a way to project a graph embedded on a sphere onto a plane such that faces that seemed infinite become closed. It involves placing a sphere on a plane so that a point on the sphere touches the plane. Then any other point on the sphere can be projected onto the plane by drawing a line from that point to the center of the sphere, which will intersect the plane at a unique point. This projection maps the sphere embedding onto the plane while preserving planarity and allowing any face to become the exterior face.

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35 views

4.8 Stereographic Projection

The document discusses stereographic projection, which is a way to project a graph embedded on a sphere onto a plane such that faces that seemed infinite become closed. It involves placing a sphere on a plane so that a point on the sphere touches the plane. Then any other point on the sphere can be projected onto the plane by drawing a line from that point to the center of the sphere, which will intersect the plane at a unique point. This projection maps the sphere embedding onto the plane while preserving planarity and allowing any face to become the exterior face.

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Udasi Devi
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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4.8.

STEREOGRAPHIC PROJECTION 129

4.8 Stereographic Projection


Consider the two graphs in Figure 4.16. The faces have been denoted with fi , for some positive
integer i. Note that in the embedding of both the graphs, there is a face, denoted f1 , which
seems to be an infinite face, whereas the other faces seem to be enclosed by the edges of the
graphs. It turns out that the face f1 , which seems to form an infinite face, can be made into
a closed face by embedding the graph into a sphere and then projecting it back on to a plane
after rotating the sphere in such a way that a point of the face f1 touches the plane. This idea
will be clear at the end of this section. This projection is called the stereographic projection. An
example of the same has been shown in Figure 4.17.

Np

Figure 4.17: Stereographic projection

The stereographic projection consists of the following:

• place a sphere on the plane and let Sp be the point on the sphere that touches the plane.
The point Sp is called the south pole.

• Now, draw the line passing through the point Sp and the center of the sphere. This line
intersects the sphere at a point, say Np . The point Np is called the north pole of the
sphere. See Figure 4.17 for the north pole.

• Now, given any point x on the sphere, draw a straight line that passes through Np and
x. This line will intersect the plane at a unique point, say y. Then the stereographic
projection of the point x is defined to be the point y on the plane.

It can be easily observed that the stereographic projection, defined above, has an inverse
map, which maps any point on the plane to a point on the sphere. To do this, let y1 be a point
on the plane. Join the point y1 with Np , the north pole. Then this line will intersect the sphere
at a unique point. This point will be the inverse image of the point y1 . Also, the image of
130 CHAPTER 4. TOPICS IN CLASSICAL GRAPH THEORY

the point Np , the north pole, under the stereographic projection is the point at infinity in the
extended plane (i.e., R2 ∪ {∞}).
Before proceeding with the result that states that every face of planar embedding of a planar
graph X can be made into an infinite face and/or bounded face, we observe that using the
stereographic projection, a planar embedding and embedding on a sphere are one and the same.

Theorem 4.8.1. Let v be a vertex of a connected planar graph X. Then X can be embedded in
the plane in such a way that v is on the exterior face of the embedding.

Proof. Let X̃ be a planar embedding of X. Use the stereographic projection to project this
embedding on the sphere. Let this embedding on the sphere be called Z̃. It is clear that this
embedding exists, as explained in previous paragraphs. Now let f be the face that has v as one
of its vertices. Take a point z in f and fix it. Now, place the sphere, on a plane, in such a way
that the point z (on the sphere) acts as the north pole. Then the projection of the embedding
Z̃ with the point z as the north pole, gives a planar embedding of X with the required property.

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