Semi-Discrete Isothermic Surfaces

Abstract

We study mappings of the form ${x : \mathbb{Z}\times\mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R}^3}$ which can be seen as a limit case of purely discrete surfaces, or as a semi-discretization of smooth surfaces. In particular we discuss circular surfaces, isothermic surfaces, conformal mappings, and dualizability in the sense of Christoffel. We arrive at a semi-discrete version of Koenigs nets and show that in the setting of circular surfaces, isothermicity is the same as dualizability. We show that minimal surfaces constructed as a dual of a sphere have vanishing mean curvature in a certain well-defined sense, and we also give an incidence-geometric characterization of isothermic surfaces.