20 pages. In "The Coxeter Legacy -- Reflections and Projections" (eds. C.Davis and E.W.Ellers), Fields Institute Communications, Vol. 46, American Mathematical Society (Providence, RI), 2005
There are two main thrusts in the theory of regular and chiral polytopes: the abstract, purely combinatorial aspect, and the geometric one of realizations. This brief survey concentrates on the latter. The dimension of a faithful realization of a finite abstract regular polytope in some euclidean space is no smaller than its rank, while that of a chiral polytope must strictly exceed the rank. There are similar restrictions on the dimensions of realizations of regular and chiral apeirotopes. From the viewpoint of realizations in a fixed dimension, the problems are now completely solved in up to three dimensions, while considerable progress has been made on the classification in four dimensions, the finite regular case again having been solved. This article reports on what has been done already, and what might be expected in the near future.
Unlike the situation in the classical theory of convex polytopes, there is a wealth of semi-regular abstract polytopes, including interesting examples exhibiting some unexpected phenomena. We prove that even an equifacetted semi-regular abstract polytope can have an arbitrary large number of flag orbits or face orbits under its combinatorial automorphism group.
A concept of generalized regular polytope is introduced in this work. The number of its (1...n-1)-dimensional elements is not necessarily integer, though all the combinatorial and metric properties meet those of regular polytopes in a classic sense. New relationships between Schlafli symbol of the regular polytope and its metric parameters have been established. Using the generalized regular polytopes concept, group and metric properties of arbitrary metric space tessellations into regular honeycombs were investigated. It has been shown that sequential tessellations of space into regular honey…
This paper presents a technique for constructing new chiral or regular polyhedra (or maps) from self-dual abstract chiral polytopes of rank 4. From improperly self-dual chiral polytopes we derive "Petrie-Coxeter-type" polyhedra (abstract chiral analogues of the classical Petrie-Coxeter polyhedra) and investigate their groups of automorphisms.
Wythoff's construction associates a uniform polytope to a Coxeter diagram whose vertices are decorated with crosses, which indicate the subgroup stabilizing a generic point. Champagne, Kjiri, Patera, and Sharp remarked that by associating more information to a Coxeter diagram, one can furthermore determine the types and number of faces of such a polytope. This article provides a proof of this result, and uses it to provide a classification of the regular polytopes.
In the classical setting, a convex polytope is said to be semiregular if its facets are regular and its symmetry group is transitive on vertices. This paper studies semiregular abstract polytopes, which have abstract regular facets, still with combinatorial automorphism group transitive on vertices. We analyze the structure of the automorphism group, focusing in particular on polytopes with two kinds of regular facets occurring in an "alternating" fashion. In particular we use group amalgamations to prove that given two compatible n-polytopes P and Q, there exists a universal abstract semiregu…
The paper studies modular reduction techniques for abstract regular and chiral polytopes, with two purposes in mind: first, to survey the literature about modular reduction in polytopes; and second, to apply modular reduction, with moduli given by primes in Z[t] (with t=τthe golden ratio), to construct new regular 4-polytopes of hyperbolic types {3,5,3} and {5,3,5} with automorphism groups given by finite orthogonal groups.
Every regular polytope has the remarkable property that it inherits all symmetries of each of its facets. This property distinguishes a natural class of polytopes which are called hereditary. Regular polytopes are by definition hereditary, but the other polytopes in this class are interesting, have possible applications in modeling of structures, and have not been previously investigated. This paper establishes the basic theory of hereditary polytopes, focussing on the analysis and construction of hereditary polytopes with highly symmetric faces.
Every finite, self-dual, regular (or chiral) 4-polytope of type {3,q,3} has a trivalent 3-transitive (or 2-transitive) medial layer graph. Here, by dropping self-duality, we obtain a construction for semisymmetric trivalent graphs (which are edge- but not vertex-transitive). In particular, the Gray graph arises as the medial layer graph of a certain universal locally toroidal regular 4-polytope.
Given a configuration $A$ of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^{d-1}$, we introduce the higher secondary polytopes $Σ_{A,1},\dots, Σ_{A,n-d}$, which have the property that $Σ_{A,1}$ agrees with the secondary polytope of Gelfand--Kapranov--Zelevinsky, while the Minkowski sum of these polytopes agrees with Billera--Sturmfels' fiber zonotope associated with (a lift of) $A$. In a special case when $d=3$, we refer to our polytopes as higher associahedra. They turn out to be related to the theory of total positivity, specifically, to certain combinatorial objects called plabic graphs, introduced by the seco…
We show that there are simple 4-dimensional polytopes with n vertices such that all separators of the graph have size at least $Ω(n/\log n)$. This establishes a strong form of a claim by Thurston, for which the construction and proof had been lost. We construct the polytopes by cutting off the vertices and then the edges of a particular type of neighborly cubical polytopes. The graphs of simple polytopes thus obtained are 4-regular; they contain 3-regular "cube-connected cycle graphs" as minors of spanning subgraphs.
Although previous research has found several facts concerning chord lengths of regular polytopes, none of these investigations has considered whether any of these facts define relationships that might generalize to the chord lengths of all regular polytopes. Consequently, this paper explores whether four findings of previous studies-- viz., the four facts relating to the sums and products of squared chord lengths of regular polygons inscribed in unit circles-- can be generalized to all regular ($n$-dimensional) polytopes (inscribed in unit $n$-spheres). We show that (a) one of these four facts…
We present the results of an investigation into the representations of Archimedean polyhedra (those polyhedra containing only one type of vertex figure) as quotients of regular abstract polytopes. Two methods of generating these presentations are discussed, one of which may be applied in a general setting, and another which makes use of a regular polytope with the same automorphism group as the desired quotient. Representations of the 14 sporadic Archimedean polyhedra (including the pseudorhombicuboctahedron) as quotients of regular abstract polyhedra are obtained, and summarised in a table. T…
It is well known that the vertices of any Euclidean simplicial regular polytope determine an optimal packing of equal spherical balls. We prove a stability version of optimal order of this result.
Let $P_n$ be an $n$-dimensional regular polytope from one of the three infinite series (regular simplices, regular crosspolytopes, and cubes). Project $P_n$ onto a random, uniformly distributed linear subspace of dimension $d\geq 2$. We prove that the expected number of $k$-dimensional faces of the resulting random polytope is an increasing function of $n$. As a corollary, we show that the expected number of $k$-faces of the Gaussian polytope is an increasing function of the number of points used to generate the polytope. Similar results are obtained for the symmetric Gaussian polytope and the…
A split of a polytope is a (necessarily regular) subdivision with exactly two maximal cells. A polytope is totally splittable if each triangulation (without additional vertices) is a common refinement of splits. This paper establishes a complete classification of the totally splittable polytopes.
We study three families of polyhedral cones whose sections are regular simplices, cubes, and crosspolytopes. We compute solid angles and conic intrinsic volumes of these cones. We show that several quantities appearing in stochastic geometry can be expressed through these conic intrinsic volumes. A list of such quantities includes internal and external solid angles of regular simplices and crosspolytopes, the probability that a (symmetric) Gaussian random polytope or the Gaussian zonotope contains a given point, the expected number of faces of the intersection of a regular polytope with a rand…
A polytope is called {\em regular-faced} if every one of its facets is a regular polytope. The 4-dimensional regular-faced polytopes were determined by G. Blind and R. Blind \cite{BlBl2,roswitha,roswitha2}. The last class of such polytopes is the one which consists of polytopes obtained by removing a set of non-adjacent vertices (an independent set) of the 600-cell. These independent sets are enumerated up to isomorphism and it is determined that the number of polytopes in this last class is $314,248,344$.
In the spirit of the Genetics of the Regular Figures, by L. Fejes Tóth, we prove the following theorem: If $2n$ points are selected in the $n$-dimensional Euclidean ball $B^n$ so that the smallest distance between any two of them is as large as possible, then the points are the vertices of an inscribed regular cross-polytope. This generalizes a result of R. A. Rankin for $2n$ points on the surface of the ball. We also generalize, in the same manner, a theorem of Davenport and Hajós on a set of $n+2$ points. As a corollary, we obtain a solution to the problem of packing $k$ unit $n$-dimensional…
The expected range of a sample of n+1 normally distributed variables is known to be related to the mean width of a regular n-simplex. We show that the expected maximum mu_n of a sample of n half-normally distributed variables is related to the mean width of a regular n-crosspolytope. Both of these relations have mean square counterparts. An expression for mu_5 is found and is believed to be new.
The paper investigates connections between abstract polytopes and properly edge colored graphs. Given any finite n-edge-colored n-regular graph G, we associate to G a simple abstract polytope P_G of rank n, called the colorful polytope of G, with 1-skeleton isomorphic to G. We investigate the interplay between the geometric, combinatorial, or algebraic properties of the polytope P_G and the combinatorial or algebraic structure of the underlying graph G, focussing in particular on aspects of symmetry. Several such families of colorful polytopes are studied including examples derived from a Cayl…
Kepler (1619) and Croft (1980) have considered largest homothetic copies of one regular polytope contained in another regular polytope. For arbitrary pairs of polytopes we propose to model this as a quadratically constrained optimization problem. These problems can then be solved numerically; in case the optimal solutions are algebraic, exact optima can be recovered by solving systems of equations to very high precision and then using integer relation algorithms. Based on this approach, we complete Croft's solution to the problem concerning maximal inclusions of regular three-dimensional polyh…
In this article we study the following question: What can be the measure of the minimal solid angle of a simplex in $\mathbb{R}^d$? We show that in dimensions three it is not greater than the solid angle of the regular simplex. And in dimension four the same holds for simplices sufficiently close to the regular simplex. We also study a similar question for trihedral and dihedral angles of polyhedra compared to those of regular solids.
The packing density of the $n$-dimensional cross-polytope
Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences（匈牙利科学院阿尔弗雷德·雷尼数学研究所）；Bolyai Institute, University of Szeged（塞格德大学博莱研究所）；University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学）
Regular polytopes, the generalization of the five Platonic solids in 3 space dimensions, exist in arbitrary dimension $n\geq-1$; now in {\rm dim}. 2, 3 and 4 there are \emph{extra} polytopes, while in general dimensions only the hyper-tetrahedron, the hyper-cube and its dual hyper-octahedron exist. We attribute these peculiarites and exceptions to special properties of the orthogonal groups in these dimensions: the $\mathrm{SO}(2)=\mathrm{U}(1)$ group being (abelian and) \emph{divisible}, is related to the existence of arbitrarily-sided plane regular polygons, and the \emph{splitting} of the L…
Peter McMullen has developed a theory of realizations of abstract regular polytopes, and has shown that the realizations up to congruence form a pointed convex cone which is the direct product of certain irreducible subcones. We show that each of these subcones is isomorphic to a set of positive semi-definite hermitian matrices of dimension $m$ over either the real numbers, the complex numbers or the quaternions. In particular, we correct an erroneous computation of the dimension of these subcones by McMullen and Monson. We show that the automorphism group of an abstract regular polytope can h…
When the standard representation of a crystallographic Coxeter group is reduced modulo an odd prime p, one obtains a finite group G^p acting on some orthogonal space over Z_p . If the Coxeter group has a string diagram, then G^p will often be the automorphism group of a finite abstract regular polytope. In parts I and II we established the basics of this construction and enumerated the polytopes associated to groups of rank at most 4, as well as all groups of spherical or Euclidean type. Here we extend the range of our earlier criteria for the polytopality of G^p . Building on this we investig…
The Gaussian polytope $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ is the convex hull of $n$ independent standard normally distributed points in $\mathbb R^d$. We derive explicit expressions for the probability that $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ contains a fixed point $x\in\mathbb R^d$ as a function of the Euclidean norm of $x$, and the probability that $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ contains the point $σX$, where $σ\geq 0$ is constant and $X$ is a standard normal vector independent of $\mathcal P_{n,d}$. As a by-product, we also compute the expected number of $k$-faces and the expected volume of $\mathcal P_{n,d}$, thus recovering the resul…
Let $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ be a standard normal sample in $\mathbb R^d$. We compute exactly the expected volume of the Gaussian polytope $\mathrm{conv}[X_1,\ldots,X_n]$, the symmetric Gaussian polytope $\mathrm{conv}[\pm X_1,\ldots,\pm X_n]$, and the Gaussian zonotope $[0,X_1]+\ldots+[0,X_n]$ by exploiting their connection to the regular simplex, the regular crosspolytope, and the cube with the aid of Tsirelson's formula. The expected volumes of these random polytopes are given by essentially the same expressions as the intrinsic volumes and external angles of the regular polytopes. For all these qu…
When the standard representation of a crystallographic Coxeter group $Γ$ is reduced modulo an odd prime $p$, a finite representation in some orthogonal space over $\mathbb{Z}_p$ is obtained. If $Γ$ has a string diagram, the latter group will often be the automorphism group of a finite regular polytope. In Part I we described the basics of this construction and enumerated the polytopes associated with the groups of rank 3 and the groups of spherical or Euclidean type. In this paper, we investigate such families of polytopes for more general choices of $Γ$, including all groups of rank 4. In par…
In this paper, we first prove the optimal lower bound for Alexandrov angle rigidity of torsion elliptic isometries on any complete CAT($κ$) space, which, when attained, leads to an embedded 2-flat in the tangent cone invariant under the induced action of the isometry. Next, we will prove similar result for action of symmetry groups of either a regular orthoplex, a regular hypercube, a regular dodecahedron or a regular icosahedron on a set of points in any complete CAT($κ$) space in a way corresponds to the set of vertices of the polytope, the angle made at the circumcenter by any pair of point…
An old conjecture states that among all simplices inscribed in the unit sphere the regular one has the maximal mean width. An equivalent formulation is that for any centered Gaussian vector $(ξ_1,\dots,ξ_n)$ satisfying $\mathbb Eξ_1^2= \dots =\mathbb Eξ_n^2=1$ one has $$ \mathbb E\,\max\{ξ_1,\dots,ξ_n\}\leq\sqrt{\frac{n}{n-1}}\, \mathbb E\,\max\{η_1,\dots,η_n\}, $$ where $η_1,η_2,\dots,$ are independent standard Gaussian variables. Using this probabilistic interpretation we derive an asymptotic version of the conjecture. We also show that the mean width of the regular simplex with $2n$ vertice…
This work presents the tessellations and polytopes from the perspective of both n-dimensional geometry and abstract symmetry groups. It starts with a brief introduction to the terminology and a short motivation. In the first part, it engages in the construction of all regular tessellations and polytopes of n dimensions and extends this to the study of their quasi-regular and uniform generalizations. In the second part, the symmetries of polytopes and tessellations are considered and the Coxeter groups and their associated root systems are introduced and classified. In the last part, the algori…
