four vector theorem四顶点定理和它的逆定理.pdf

THE FOUR VERTEX THEOREM AND ITS CONVERSE Dennis DeTurck, Herman Gluck, Daniel Pomerleano, David Shea Vick Dedicated to the memory of Björn Dahlberg Abstract The Four Vertex Theorem, one of the earliest results in global differential geometry, says that a simple closed curve in the plane, other than a circle, must have at least four vertices, that is, at least four points where the curvature has a local maximum or local minimum. In 1909 Syamadas Mukhopadhyaya proved this for strictly convex curves in the plane, and in 1912 Adolf Kneser proved it for all simple closed curves in the plane, not just the strictly convex ones. The Converse to the Four Vertex Theorem says that any continuous real- valued function on the circle which has at least two local maxima and two local minima is the curvature function of a simple closed curve in the plane. In 1971 Herman Gluck proved this for strictly positive preassigned curvature, and in 1997 Bjˆrn Dahlberg proved the full converse, without the restriction that the curvature be strictly positive. Publication was delayed by Dahlbergs untimely death in January 1998, but his paper was edited afterwards by Vilhelm Adolfsson and Peter Kumlin, and finally appeared in 2005. The work of Dahlberg completes the almost hundred-year-long thread of ideas begun by Mukhopadhyaya, and we take this opportunity to provide a self-contained exposition. August, 2006 1 I. Why is the Four Vertex Theorem true? 1. A simple construction. A counter-example would be a simple closed curve in the plane whose curvature is nonconstant, has one minimum and one maximum, and is weakly monotonic on the two arcs between them.