Quadrangulations of sphere and ball quotients

We give a classification of sphere quadrangulations satisfying a condition of non‐negative curvature, following Thurston's classification of sphere triangulations under the same condition. The generic family of quadrangulations is parametrized by the points of positive square‐norm of an integral Gaußian lattice in the six‐dimensional complex Lorentz space. There is a subgroup of automorphisms of acting on this lattice whose orbits parametrize sphere quadrangulations in a one‐to‐one manner. This group acts discretely on the corresponding five‐dimensional complex hyperbolic space; is of finite co‐volume; its ball quotient is the moduli space of unordered 8 points on the Riemann sphere, and also appears in Picard‐Terada‐Deligne‐Mostow list. Both Thurston's lattice and our lattice may be thought of as parametrizations of certain families of subgroups of the modular group; equivalently, of certain families of dessins. These families also parametrize points of a moduli space.