What is "cross-ratio"

alt. (context geometry English) A special number associated with an ordered quadruple of collinear points, particularly points on a projective line, and preserved by the fractional linear transformations. n. (context geometry English) A special number associated with an ordered quadruple of collinear points, particularly points on a projective line, and preserved by the fractional linear transformations.

In geometry, the cross-ratio, also called double ratio and anharmonic ratio, is a number associated with a list of four collinear points, particularly points on a projective line. Given four points A, B, C and D on a line, their cross ratio is defined as

$(A,B;C,D) = \frac {AC\cdot BD}{BC\cdot AD}$

where an orientation of the line determines the sign of each distance and the distance is measured as projected into Euclidean space. (If one of the four points is the line's point at infinity, then the two distances involving that point are dropped from the formula.)

The point D is the projective harmonic conjugate of C with respect to A and B precisely if the cross-ratio of the quadruple is −1, called the harmonic ratio. The cross-ratio can therefore be regarded as measuring the quadruple's deviation from this ratio; hence the name anharmonic ratio.

The cross-ratio is preserved by the fractional linear transformations and it is essentially the only projective invariant of a quadruple of collinear points, which underlies its importance for projective geometry. In the Cayley–Klein model of hyperbolic geometry, the distance between points is expressed in terms of a certain cross-ratio.

Cross-ratio had been defined in deep antiquity, possibly already by Euclid, and was considered by Pappus, who noted its key invariance property. It was extensively studied in the 19th century. Variants of this concept exist for a quadruple of concurrent lines on the projective plane and a quadruple of points on the Riemann sphere.