In 1996 I.Kh. Sabitov proved that the volume of a simplicial polyhedron in a 3-dimensional Euclidean space is a root of certain polynomial with coefficients depending on the combinatorial type and on edge lengths of the polyhedron only. Moreover, the coefficients of this polynomial are polynomials in edge lengths of the polyhedron. This result implies that the volume of a simplicial polyhedron with fixed combinatorial type and edge lengths can take only finitely many values. In particular, this yields that the volume of a flexible polyhedron in a 3-dimensional Euclidean space is constant. Until now it has been unknown whether these results can be obtained in dimensions greater than 3. In this paper we prove that all these results hold for polyhedra in a 4-dimensional Euclidean space.
We discuss some recent results on flexible polyhedra and the bellows conjecture, which claims that the volume of any flexible polyhedron is constant during the flexion. Also, we survey main methods and several open problems in this area.
A connection between real poles of the growth functions for Coxeter groups acting on hyperbolic space of dimensions three and greater and algebraic integers is investigated. In particular, a geometric convergence of fundamental domains for cocompact hyperbolic Coxeter groups with finite-volume limiting polyhedron provides a relation between Salem numbers and Pisot numbers. Several examples conclude this work.
In this paper we obtain new upper bounds on volumes of right-angled polyhedra in hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}^3$ in three different cases: for ideal polyhedra with all vertices on the ideal hyperbolic boundary, for compact polytopes with only finite (or usual) vertices, and for finite volume polyhedra with vertices of both types.
We are generalizing to higher dimensions the Bavard-Ghys construction of the hyperbolic metric on the space of polygons with fixed directions of edges. The space of convex d-dimensional polyhedra with fixed directions of facet normals has a decomposition into type cones that correspond to different combinatorial types of polyhedra. This decomposition is a subfan of the secondary fan of a vector configuration and can be analyzed with the help of Gale diagrams. We construct a family of quadratic forms on each of the type cones using the theory of mixed volumes. The Alexandrov-Fenchel inequalitie…
For a compact right-angled polyhedron $R$ in $\mathbb H^3$ denote by $\operatorname{vol} (R)$ the volume and by $\operatorname{vert} (R)$ the number of vertices. Upper and lower bounds for $\operatorname{vol} (R)$ in terms of $\operatorname{vert} (R)$ were obtained in \cite{A09}. Constructing a 2-parameter family of polyhedra, we show that the asymptotic upper bound $5 v_3 / 8$, where $v_3$ is the volume of the ideal regular tetrahedron in $\mathbb H^3$, is a double limit point for ratios $\operatorname{vol} (R) / \operatorname{vert} (R)$. Moreover, we improve the lower bound in the case $\ope…
An algorithm for determining the list of smallest volume right-angled hyperbolic polyhedra in dimension 3 is described. This algorithm has been implemented on computer using the program Orb to compute volumes, and the first 825 polyhedra in the list have been determined.
We prove a randomized version of the generalized Urysohn inequality relating mean-width to the other intrinsic volumes. To do this, we introduce a stochastic approximation procedure that sees each convex body K as the limit of intersections of Euclidean balls of large radii and centered at randomly chosen points. The proof depends on a new isoperimetric inequality for the intrinsic volumes of such intersections. If the centers are i.i.d. and sampled according to a bounded continuous distribution, then the extremizing measure is uniform on a Euclidean ball. If one additionally assumes that the …
We suggest a method of computing volume for a simple polytope $P$ in three-dimensional hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}^3$. This method combines the combinatorial reduction of $P$ as a trivalent graph $Γ$ (the $1$-skeleton of $P$) by $I-H$, or Whitehead, moves (together with shrinking of triangular faces) aligned with its geometric splitting into generalised tetrahedra. With each decomposition (under some conditions) we associate a potential function $Φ$ such that the volume of $P$ can be expressed through a critical values of $Φ$. The results of our numeric experiments with this method suggest th…
After work of W. P. Thurston, C. Bavard and É. Ghys constructed particular hyperbolic polyhedra from spaces of deformations of Euclidean polygons. We present this construction as a straightforward consequence of the theory of mixed-volumes. The gluing of these polyhedra can be isometrically embedded into complex hyperbolic cone-manifolds constructed by Thurston from spaces of deformations of Euclidean polyhedra. It is then possible to deduce the metric structure of the spaces of polygons embedded in complex hyperbolic orbifolds discovered by P. Deligne and G. D. Mostow.
In this paper we deal with the problem to find the maximal volume polyhedra with a prescribed property and inscribed in the unit sphere. We generalize those inequality (called by \emph{icosahedron inequality}) of L. Fejes-Tóth of which an interesting consequence the fact that regular icosahedron has maximal volume in the class of the polyhedra with twelve vertices and inscribed in the unit sphere. We give an upper bound for the volume of such star-shaped (with respect to the origin) triangular polyhedra which we know the maximal edge lengths of its faces, respectively. As a further consequence…
A convex polyhedron, that is, a compact convex subset of $\mathbb{R}^3$ which is the intersection of finitely many closed half-spaces, can be rectified by taking the convex hull of the midpoints of the edges of the polyhedron. We derive expressions for the side lengths and areas of rectifications of regular polygons in plane, and use these results to compute surface areas and volumes of various convex polyhedra. We introduce rectification sequences and show that there are exactly two disjoint pure rectification sequences generated by the platonic solids.
The calculation of volumes of polyhedra in the three-dimensional Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic spaces is very old and difficult problem. In particular, an elementary formula for volume of non-euclidean simplex is still unknown. One of the simplest polyhedra is the Lambert cube Q(α,β,γ). By definition, Q(α,β,γ) is a combinatorial cube, with dihedral angles α,βand γassigned to the three mutually non-coplanar edges and right angles to the remaining. The hyperbolic volume of Lambert cube was found by Ruth Kellerhals (1989) in terms of the Lobachevsky function Λ(x). In the present paper the s…
Given a polyhedral surface, assume that it is prohibited to change the shape and size of any face but it is permissible to change the dihedral angles between the faces. A polyhedral surface is said to be flexible if it is possible to change its shape under the above restrictions. We prove that flexible polyhedral surfaces without boundary do exist in the Minkowski 3-space and each of them preserves the (inclosed) volume and the (total) mean curvature during a flex. To prove the latter result, we introduce the notion of the angle between two arbitrary non-null nonzero vectors in the Minkowski p…
We prove that, both in the hyperbolic and spherical 3-spaces, there exist nonconvex compact boundary-free polyhedral surfaces without selfintersections which admit nontrivial continuous deformations preserving all dihedral angles and study properties of such polyhedral surfaces. In particular, we prove that the volume of the domain, bounded by such a polyhedral surface, is necessarily constant during such a deformation while, for some families of polyhedral surfaces, the surface area, the total mean curvature, and the Gauss curvature of some vertices are nonconstant during deformations that pr…
A very fundamental geometric problem on finite systems of spheres was independently phrased by Kneser (1955) and Poulsen (1954). According to their well-known conjecture if a finite set of balls in Euclidean space is repositioned so that the distance between the centers of every pair of balls is decreased, then the volume of the union (resp., intersection) of the balls is decreased (resp., increased). In the first half of this paper we survey the state of the art of the Kneser-Poulsen conjecture in Euclidean, spherical as well as hyperbolic spaces with the emphases being on the Euclidean case.…
The zero cell of a parametric class of random hyperplane tessellations depending on a distance exponent and an intensity parameter is investigated, as the space dimension tends to infinity. The model includes the zero cell of stationary and isotropic Poisson hyperplane tessellations as well as the typical cell of a stationary Poisson Voronoi tessellation as special cases. It is shown that asymptotically in the space dimension, with overwhelming probability these cells satisfy the hyperplane conjecture, if the distance exponent and the intensity parameter are suitably chosen dimension-dependent…
The convex hull generated by the restriction to the unit ball of a stationary Poisson point process in the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space is considered. By establishing sharp bounds on cumulants, exponential estimates for large deviation probabilities are derived and the relative error in the central limit theorem on a logarithmic scale is investigated for a large class of key geometric characteristics. This includes the number of lower-dimensional faces and the intrinsic volumes of the random polytopes. Furthermore, moderate deviation principles for the spatial empirical measures induced by …
We consider a compact hyperbolic antiprism. It is a convex polyhedron with $2n$ vertices in the hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}^3$. This polyhedron has a symmetry group $S_{2n}$ generated by a mirror-rotational symmetry of order $2n$, i.e. rotation to the angle $π/n$ followed by a reflection. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such polyhedra in $\mathbb{H}^3$. Then we find relations between their dihedral angles and edge lengths in the form of a cosine rule. Finally, we obtain exact integral formulas expressing the volume of a hyperbolic antiprism in terms of th…
We overview the volume calculations for polyhedra in Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic spaces. We prove the Sforza formula for the volume of an arbitrary tetrahedron in $H^3$ and $S^3$. We also present some results, which provide a solution for Seidel problem on the volume of non-Euclidean tetrahedron. Finally, we consider a convex hyperbolic quadrilateral inscribed in a circle, horocycle or one branch of equidistant curve. This is a natural hyperbolic analog of the cyclic quadrilateral in the Euclidean plane. We find a few versions of the Brahmagupta formula for the area of such quadrilater…
Let $P_1,\dots, P_n$ and $Q_1,\dots, Q_n$ be convex polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ such that $P_i\subset Q_i$. It is well-known that the mixed volume has the monotonicity property: $V(P_1,\dots,P_n)\leq V(Q_1,\dots,Q_n)$. We give two criteria for when this inequality is strict in terms of essential collections of faces as well as mixed polyhedral subdivisions. This geometric result allows us to characterize sparse polynomial systems with Newton polytopes $P_1,\dots,P_n$ whose number of isolated solutions equals the normalized volume of the convex hull of $P_1\cup\dots\cup P_n$. In addition, we ob…
A generalized hyperbolic tetrahedra is a polyhedron (possibly non-compact) with finite volume in hyperbolic space, obtained from a tetrahedron by the polar truncation at the vertices lying outside the space. In this paper it is proved that a volume formula for ordinary hyperbolic tetrahedra devised by J. Murakami and M. Yano can be applied to such ones. There are two key tools for the proof; one is so-called Schlafli's differential formula for hyperbolic polyhedra, and the other is a necessary and sufficient condition for given numbers to be the dihedral angles of a generalized hyperbolic simp…
The Mahler measure of the polynomials $t(x^m-1) y - (x^n-1) \in \dC[x,y]$ is essentially the sum of volumes of a certain collection of ideal hyperbolic polyhedra in $\HH^3$, which can be determined a priori as a function on the parameter $t$. We obtain a formula that generalizes some previous formulas given by Cassaigne and Maillot \cite{M} and Vandervelde \cite{V}. These examples seem to be related to the ones studied by Boyd \cite{B1}, \cite{B2} and Boyd and Rodriguez Villegas \cite{BRV2} for some cases of the $A$-polynomial of one-cusped manifolds.
A three-dimensional orthoscheme is defined as a tetrahedron whose base is a right-angled triangle and an edge joining the apex and a non-right-angled vertex is perpendicular to the base. A generalization, called complete orthoschemes, of orthoschemes is known in hyperbolic geometry. Roughly speaking, complete orthoschemes consist of three kinds of polyhedra; either compact, ideal or truncated. We consider a particular family of hyperbolic complete orthoschemes, which share the same base. They are parametrized by the "height", which represents how far the apex is from the base. We prove that th…
In his paper "On the Schlafli differential equality", J. Milnor conjectured that the volume of n-dimensional hyperbolic and spherical simplices, as a function of the dihedral angles, extends continuously to the closure of the space of allowable angles (``The continuity conjecture''), and furthermore, the limit at a boundary point is equal to 0 if and only if the point lies in the closure of the space of angles of Euclidean tetrahedra (``the Vanishing Conjecture''). A proof of the Continuity Conjecture was given by F. Luo -- Luo's argument uses Kneser's formula for the volume together with some…
