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I was working out Gamelin's Complex Analysis and read through the part where he finds an expression for the chordal distance on the Riemann Sphere corresponding to the stereographic projection w.r.t. North Pole $N(0,0,1)$:

$$\phi(u,v,w)=\bigg(\frac{u}{1-w},\frac{v}{1-w}\bigg)$$ $$\phi^{-1}(x,y)=\bigg(\frac{2x}{x^2+y^2+1},\frac{2y}{x^2+y^2+1},\frac{x^2+y^2-1}{x^2+y^2+1}\bigg)$$

He starts with $$\hat{d}(z,w)=|\phi^{-1}(z)-\phi^{-1}(w)|$$ and works out to get an expression $$\hat{d}(z,w)=\frac{2|z-w|}{\sqrt{(1+|z|^2)}\sqrt{(1+|w|^2)}}$$

Everything was fine until I started finding such an expression for stereographic projection of the sphere below:$$x^2+y^2+\bigg(z-\frac12\bigg)^2=\frac14$$

enter image description here

The map turned out to be

$$\psi(u,v,w)=\bigg(\frac{u}{1-w},\frac{v}{1-w}\bigg)$$ $$\psi^{-1}(x,y)=\bigg(\frac{x}{x^2+y^2+1},\frac{y}{x^2+y^2+1},\frac{x^2+y^2}{x^2+y^2+1}\bigg)$$

Then taking

$$\hat{d}(z,w)=|\psi^{-1}(z)-\psi^{-1}(w)|=|x-y|\,\,\,\,\text{(say)}$$

where $\psi^{-1}(z)=x=(x_1,x_2,x_3)$ and $ \psi^{-1}(w)=y=(y_1,y_2,y_3)$

Then$$[\hat{d}(z,w)]^{2}=|x-y|^2=\langle x-y,x-y\rangle=\langle x,x\rangle +\langle y,y\rangle -2\langle x,y\rangle$$

Solving further and substituting values of $x_i$'s and $y_j$'s from the map, i got to the point

$$[\hat{d}(z,w)]^{2}=\frac{|z|^2}{(|z|^2+1)^2}+\frac{|y|^2}{(|y|^2+1)^2}+\frac{2y\bar{z}+2\bar{y}z+|z|^2|y|^2}{2(|z|^2+1)(|y|^2+1)}$$

Any help to proceed further would be appreciated. Thank you.

  • This answer may be helpful: http://math.stackexchange.com/a/1090358 –  Aug 17 '15 at 02:21
  • Absolutely helpful, thank you. I did a big blunder. @NormalHuman – Swapnil Tripathi Aug 17 '15 at 17:26
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    I don't understand why you have introduced a new sphere? It's my understand that the unit sphere with North Pole N(0,0,1) is used in all stereographic projection? This describes a mapping of a straight line between 2 points z & w in the complex plane to a chord d(z,w) between the corresponding points on the surface of the unit sphere (or vice-versa) – Chris Butler Sep 17 '17 at 17:20

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