There is no triangulation of the torus with vertex degrees 5, 6, . . . , 6, 7 and related results:
Geometric proofs for combinatorial theoremsIvan Izmestiev · Robert B. Kusner · Günter Rote · Boris Springborn · John M. Sullivan Abstract There is no 5,7-triangulation of the torus, that is, no triangulation with exactly two exceptional vertices, of degree 5 and 7. Similarly, there is no 3,5-quadrangulation. The vertices of a 2,4-hexangulation of the torus cannot be bicolored. Similar statements hold for 4,8-triangulations and 2,6-quadrangulations. We prove these results, of which the first two are known and the others seem to be new, as corollaries of a theorem on the holonomy group of a euclidean cone metric on the torus with just two cone points. We provide two proofs of this theorem: One argument is metric in nature, the other relies on the induced conformal structure and proceeds by invoking the residue theorem. Similar methods can be used to prove a theorem of Dress on infinite triangulations of the plane with exactly two irregular vertices. The non-existence results for torus decompositions provide infinite families of graphs which cannot be embedded in the torus.
IntroductionIn any triangulation of the torus, the average vertex degree is 6, so vertices of degree d = 6 can be considered exceptional. It is easy to find regular triangulations with no exceptional vertices, as in Figure 1. Applying a single edge flip to such a triangulation produces a triangulation with four exceptional vertices (assuming the four vertices in question are distinct): two of degree 5 and two of degree 7, as in Figure 2(a). We call this a 5 2 7 2 -triangulation. Similarly, we can produce examples of triangulations with just two exceptional vertices, assuming these have degrees other than 5 and 7. Figure 3 shows 4,8-, 3,9-, 2,10-and 1,11-triangulations of the torus. However:The torus has no 5,7-triangulation, that is, no triangulation with exactly two exceptional vertices, of degree 5 and 7.We can also consider quadrangulations of the torus. In this case, the average vertex degree is 4, and an analogous theorem holds:Theorem 2 (Barnette, Jucovič & Trenkler [3]) The torus has no 3,5-quadrangulation, that is, no quadrangulation with exactly two exceptional vertices, of degree 3 and 5.On the other hand, 2,4-and 3 2 5 2 -quadrangulations do exist, as shown in Figure 4. Finally, one