Circles and are tangent at a point ( lies inside ). A chord of is tangent to at ; the line meets again at . Chords and of are tangent to . Let , and be the incentres of the triangles , and , respectively. Prove that
Solution
Notice that a homothety centred at mapping to maps to , and maps the line to the tangent to at . Thus this tangent is parallel to , and hence is the midpoint of arc (not containing ). So the points , and lie on the segments , and , respectively.
Recall that for any triangle with the circumcircle and incentre , the points , and are equidistant from the midpoint of arc of not containing . Applying this to triangles , and we obtain that
Since is the midpoint of arc , we get that . Thus the triangles and are similar, and . Since is tangent to , it follows that is their point of tangency; analogously, is the point of tangency of with .
Finally, from isosceles triangles and we get and . Denoting by the centre of , we obtain . Thus,
as required.