Hyperbolic law of cosines

In hyperbolic geometry, the law of cosines is a pair of theorems relating the sides and angles of triangles on a hyperbolic plane, analogous to the planar law of cosines from plane trigonometry, or the spherical law of cosines in spherical trigonometry.

Take a hyperbolic plane whose Gaussian curvature is $-\frac1{k^2}$. Then given a hyperbolic triangle ABC with angles α, β, γ, and side lengths BC = a, AC = b, and AB = c, the following two rules hold:

$\cosh\frac ak = \cosh\frac bk \cosh\frac ck - \sinh\frac bk \sinh\frac ck \cos\alpha, \,$

considering the sides, while

$\cos\alpha = -\cos\beta \cos\gamma + \sin\beta \sin\gamma \cosh\frac ak, \,$

for the angles.

Christian Houzel (page 8) indicates that the hyperbolic law of cosines implies the angle of parallelism in the case of an ideal hyperbolic triangle:

When α = 0, that is when the vertex A is rejected to infinity and the sides BA and CA are parallel, the first member equals 1; let us suppose in addition that γ = π/2 so that cos γ = 0 and sin γ = 1. The angle at B takes a value β given by 1 = sin β cosh(a/k); this angle was later called angle of parallelism and Lobachevsky noted it by F(a) or Π(a).

Hyperbolic law of Haversines

In cases where a/k is small, and being solved for, the numerical precision of the standard form of the hyperbolic law of cosines will drop due to rounding errors, for the exact same reason it does in the Spherical law of cosines. The hyperbolic version of the law of haversines can prove useful in this case:

$\sinh^2\frac{a}{2k} = \sinh^2\frac{b-c}{2k} + \sinh\frac bk \sinh\frac ck \sin^2\frac{\alpha}{2}, \,$

See also

• Hyperbolic law of sines
• Hyperbolic triangle trigonometry

References

• Houzel, Christian (1992) "The Birth of Non-Euclidean Geometry", pages 3 to 21 in 1830–1930: A Century of Geometry, Lecture Notes in Physics #402, Springer-Verlag ISBN 3-540-55408-4 .
• Anderson, James W. (2005). Hyperbolic geometry (2nd ed.). London: Springer. ISBN 1-85233-934-9.
• Miles Reid & Balázs Szendröi (2005) Geometry and Topology, §3.10 Hyperbolic triangles and trig, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-61325-6, MR 2194744.
• Reiman, István (1999). Geometria és határterületei. Szalay Könyvkiadó és Kereskedőház Kft. ISBN 978-963-237-012-5.

External links

• Non Euclidean Geometry, Math Wiki at TU Berlin