Eulerian edge refinements, geodesics, billiards and sphere coloring

Abstract

A finite simple graph is called a 2-graph if all of its unit spheres S(x) are cyclic graphs of length 4 or larger. A 2-graph G is Eulerian if all vertex degrees of G are even. An edge refinement of a graph splits an edge (a,b) to two edges (a,c),(c,b) and connects the newly added vertex c to the intersection of S(a) with S(b). Theorem I assures that every 2-graph can be rendered Eulerian by successive edge refinements. The construction is explicit using geodesic cutting. After the refinement, we have an Eulerian 2-graph that carries a natural geodesic flow. We construct some ergodic ones. A 2-graph with boundary is finite simple graph for which every unit sphere is either a path graph of length n larger than 1 or a cyclic graph of length larger than 3. 2-balls are special 2-graphs are simply connected with a circular boundary. Theorem II tells that every 2-ball can be edge refined using interior edges to become Eulerian if and only if its boundary has length divisible by 3. A billiard map is defined already if all interior vertices have even degree. We will construct some ergodic billiards in 2-balls, where the geodesics bouncing off at the boundary symmetrically and which visit every interior edge exactly once. A consequence of Theorem II is that an Eulerian billiard which is ergodic must have a boundary length that is divisible by 3. We also construct other 2-graphs like tori with ergodic geodesic flows. This clashes with experience in the continuum, where tori have periodic points minimizing the length in homology classes of paths. Ergodic Eulerian 2-graphs or billiards are exciting because they satisfy a Hopf-Rynov result: there exists a geodesic connection between any two vertices. We get so unique canonical metric associated to any ergodic Eulerian graph. It is non-local in the sense that two adjacent vertices can have large distance.