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Register a new userNon-rational configurations, polytopes, and surfaces
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Authors
Gunter M. Ziegler
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It is an amazing and a bit counter-intuitive discovery by Micha Perles from the sixties that there are ``non-rational polytopes: combinatorial types of convex polytopes that cannot be realized with rational vertex coordinates. We describe a simple construction of non-rational polytopes that does not need duality (Perles ``Gale diagrams): It starts from a non-rational point configuration in the plane, and proceeds with so-called Lawrence extensions. We also show that there are non-rational polyhedral surfaces in 3-space, a discovery by Ulrich Brehm from 1997. His construction also starts from any non-rational point configuration in the plane, and then performs what one should call Brehm extensions, in order to obtain non-rational partial surfaces. These examples and objects are first mile stones on the way to the remarkable universality theorems for polytopes and for polyhedral surfaces by Mnev (1986), Richter-Gebert (1994), and Brehm (1997).
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We will study the angle sums of polytopes, listed in the $alpha$-vector, working to exploit the analogy between the f-vector of faces in each dimension and the alpha-vector of angle sums. The Gram and Perles relations on the $alpha$-vector are analogous to the Euler and Dehn-Sommerville relations on the f-vector. First we describe the spaces spanned by the the alpha-vector and the $alpha$-f-vectors of certain classes of polytopes. Families of polytopes are constructed whose angle sums span the spaces of polytopes defined by the Gram and Perles equations. This shows that the dimension of the affine span of the space of angle sums of simplices is floor[(d-1)/2], and that of the combined angle sums and face numbers of simplicial polytopes and general polytopes are d-1 and 2d-3, respectively. Next we consider angle sums of polytopal complexes. We define the angle characteristic on the alpha-vector in analogy to the Euler characteristic. We show that the changes in the two correspond and that, in the case of certain odd-dimensional polytopal complexes, the angle characteristic is half the Euler characteristic. Finally, we consider spherical and hyperbolic polytopes and polytopal complexes. Spherical and hyperbolic analogs of the Gram relation and a spherical analog of the Perles relation are known, and we show the hyperbolic analog of the Perles relations in a number of cases. Proving this relation for simplices of dimension greater than 3 would finish the proof of this result. Also, we show how constructions on spherical and hyperbolic polytopes lead to corresponding changes in the angle characteristic and Euler characteristic.
For $3$-dimensional convex polytopes, inscribability is a classical property that is relatively well-understood due to its relation with Delaunay subdivisions of the plane and hyperbolic geometry. In particular, inscribability can be tested in polynomial time, and for every $f$-vector of $3$-polytopes, there exists an inscribable polytope with that $f$-vector. For higher-dimensional polytopes, much less is known. Of course, for any inscribable polytope, all of its lower-dimensional faces need to be inscribable, but this condition does not appear to be very strong. We observe non-trivial new obstructions to the inscribability of polytopes that arise when imposing that a certain inscribable face be inscribed. Using this obstruction, we show that the duals of the $4$-dimensional cyclic polytopes with at least $8$ vertices---all of whose faces are inscribable---are not inscribable. This result is optimal in the following sense: We prove that the duals of the cyclic $4$-polytopes with up to $7$ vertices are, in fact, inscribable. Moreover, we interpret this obstruction combinatorially as a forbidden subposet of the face lattice of a polytope, show that $d$-dimensional cyclic polytopes with at least $d+4$ vertices are not circumscribable, and that no dual of a neighborly $4$-polytope with $8$ vertices, that is, no polytope with $f$-vector $(20,40,28,8)$, is inscribable.
In this paper, we will describe the space spanned by the angle-sums of polytopes, recorded in the alpha-vector. We will consider the angles sums of simplices and the angles sums and face numbers of simplicial polytopes and general polytopes. We will construct families of polytopes whose angle sums span the spaces of polytopes defined by the Gram and Perles equations, analogues of the Euler and Dehn-Sommerville equations. We show that the dimensions of the affine span of the space of angle sums of simplices is floor[(d-1)/2] + 1, and that of the angle sums and face numbers of simplicial polytopes and general polytopes are d-1 and 2d-3 respectively.
We describe a method for computing the highest degree coefficients of a weighted Ehrhart quasi-polynomial for a rational simple polytope.
A foundational theorem of Laman provides a counting characterisation of the finite simple graphs whose generic bar-joint frameworks in two dimensions are infinitesimally rigid. Recently a Laman-type characterisation was obtained for frameworks in three dimensions whose vertices are constrained to concentric spheres or to concentric cylinders. Noting that the plane and the sphere have 3 independent locally tangential infinitesimal motions while the cylinder has 2, we obtain here a Laman-Henneberg theorem for frameworks on algebraic surfaces with a 1-dimensional space of tangential motions. Such surfaces include the torus, helicoids and surfaces of revolution. The relevant class of graphs are the (2,1)-tight graphs, in contrast to (2,3)-tightness for the plane/sphere and (2,2)-tightness for the cylinder. The proof uses a new characterisation of simple (2,1)-tight graphs and an inductive construction requiring generic rigidity preservation for 5 graph moves, including the two Henneberg moves, an edge joining move and various vertex surgery moves.
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