Symmetries of 3-polytopes with fixed edge length (Q2212701): Difference between revisions

Given a polytope \(P\), let \(L(P)\) denote its set of faces. Equipped with the inclusion relation, this gives us a face lattice of the polytope \(P\). Two polytopes \(P\) and \(P'\) are called combinatorially equivalent if there exists an order-preserving bijection \(\sigma: L(P)\rightarrow L(P')\) such that for each vertex \(v\in V(P)\) the labels of \(v\) and \(\sigma(v)\) are the same. Now for a given labeled polytope \(P\) and a permutation \(\sigma\) of its vertices, relabel vertex \(v\) with the former label of \(\sigma^{-1}(v)\). Let \(P_{\sigma}\) denote this polytope. Then the permutation \(\sigma\) is called a \(combinatorial ~symmetry\) of \(P\) if \(P\) and \(P_{\sigma}\) are combinatorially equivalent, that is, if the permutation \(\sigma: V(P)\rightarrow V(P)\) extends to an isomorphism \(\sigma_{iso}: L(P)\rightarrow L(P)\). The combinatorial symmetry \(\sigma\) is called \(edge\)-\(length\) \(preserving\) if for each edge \(e\) of the polytope \(P\) the lengths of the edges \(e\) and \(\sigma_{iso}(e)\) are equal. Polytope \(P\) realizes its combinatorial symmetry \(\sigma\) if the polytopes \(P\) and \(P_{\sigma}\) are congruent, that is, \(\sigma\) extends to an isometry of \(\mathbb{R}^3\). A polygon is called cyclic if all its vertices lie on a circle. In this article, the author proves that if each 2-dimensional face of a convex 3-polytope \(P\) is cyclic, then \(P\) realizes all its edge-length preserving combinatorial symmetries, and conjecture it to hold for higher-dimensional polytopes. They also show that if each bounded 2-dimensional face of a convex plane graph \(G\) is cyclic, then \(G\) realizes all its edge-length preserving combinatorial symmetries.