Quadrilateral Mesh Generation II : Meromorphic Quartic Differentials and Abel-Jacobi Condition

Abstract This work discovers the equivalence relation between quadrilateral meshes and meromorphic quartic differentials. Each quad-mesh induces a conformal structure of the surface, and a meromorphic quartic differential, where the configuration of singular vertices corresponds to the configurations of the poles and zeros (divisor) of the meromorphic differential. Due to Riemann surface theory, the configuration of singularities of a quad-mesh satisfies the Abel–Jacobi condition. Inversely, if a divisor satisfies the Abel–Jacobi condition, then there exists a meromorphic quartic differential whose divisor equals the given one. Furthermore, if the meromorphic quartic differential is with finite trajectories, then it also induces a quad-mesh, the poles and zeros of the meromorphic differential correspond to the singular vertices of the quad-mesh. Besides the theoretic proofs, the computational algorithm for verification of Abel–Jacobi condition is also explained in detail. Furthermore, constructive algorithm of meromorphic quartic differential on genus zero surfaces is proposed, which is based on the global algebraic representation of meromorphic differentials. Our experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and efficacy of the algorithm. This opens up a novel direction for quad-mesh generation using algebraic geometric approach.