Polytopes close to being simple
- Authors: Pineda-Villavicencio, Guillermo , Ugon, Julien , Yost, David
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Discrete and Computational Geometry Vol. 64, no. 1 (2020), p. 200-215
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP180100602
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- Description: It is known that polytopes with at most two nonsimple vertices are reconstructible from their graphs, and that d-polytopes with at most d- 2 nonsimple vertices are reconstructible from their 2-skeletons. Here we close the gap between 2 and d- 2 , showing that certain polytopes with more than two nonsimple vertices are reconstructible from their graphs. In particular, we prove that reconstructibility from graphs also holds for d-polytopes with d+ k vertices and at most d- k+ 3 nonsimple vertices, provided k
On the reconstruction of polytopes
- Authors: Doolittle, Joseph , Nevo, Eran , Pineda-Villavicencio, Guillermo , Ugon, Julien , Yost, David
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Discrete and Computational Geometry Vol. 61, no. 2 (2019), p. 285-302. http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP180100602
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- Description: Blind and Mani, and later Kalai, showed that the face lattice of a simple polytope is determined by its graph, namely its 1-skeleton. Call a vertex of a d-polytope nonsimple if the number of edges incident to it is more than d. We show that (1) the face lattice of any d-polytope with at most two nonsimple vertices is determined by its 1-skeleton; (2) the face lattice of any d-polytope with at most d- 2 nonsimple vertices is determined by its 2-skeleton; and (3) for any d> 3 there are two d-polytopes with d- 1 nonsimple vertices, isomorphic (d- 3) -skeleta and nonisomorphic face lattices. In particular, the result (1) is best possible for 4-polytopes. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
The excess degree of a polytope
- Authors: Pineda-Villavicencio, Guillermo , Ugon, Julien , Yost, David
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics Vol. 32, no. 3 (2018), p. 2011-2046, http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP180100602
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- Description: We define the excess degree \xi (P) of a d-polytope P as 2f1 - df0, where f0 and f1 denote the number of vertices and edges, respectively. This parameter measures how much P deviates from being simple. It turns out that the excess degree of a d-polytope does not take every natural number: the smallest possible values are 0 and d - 2, and the value d - 1 only occurs when d = 3 or 5. On the other hand, for fixed d, the number of values not taken by the excess degree is finite if d is odd, and the number of even values not taken by the excess degree is finite if d is even. The excess degree is then applied in three different settings. First, it is used to show that polytopes with small excess (i.e., \xi (P) < d) have a very particular structure: provided d ot = 5, either there is a unique nonsimple vertex, or every nonsimple vertex has degree d + 1. This implies that such polytopes behave in a similar manner to simple polytopes in terms of Minkowski decomposability: they are either decomposable or pyramidal, and their duals are always indecomposable. Second, we characterize completely the decomposable d-polytopes with 2d + 1 vertices (up to combinatorial equivalence). Third, all pairs (f0, f1), for which there exists a 5-polytope with f0 vertices and f1 edges, are determined.