Characterizations of cyclic polytopes

(n)-dimensional polytopes (52B11) Special polytopes (linear programming, centrally symmetric, etc.) (52B12) Arrangements of points, flats, hyperplanes (aspects of discrete geometry) (52C35)

Review text

A \(d\)-dimensional polytope \(P\) is cyclic if \(P\) is simplicial and, relative to some ordering of the vertex set \(V\), \(P\) satisfies Gale's evenness condition: \(Y\subset V\) is the vertex set of a facet of \(P\) if and only if between any two vertices of \(V\setminus Y\) is an even number of vertices of \(Y\). Cyclic polytopes play an important role in the combinatorial study of convex polytopes. This paper gives a new characterization of even-dimensional cyclic polytopes, and a sufficient condition for odd-dimensional polytopes to be cyclic. Suppose \(X\) is a set of \(n\) points in general position in \({\mathbb R}^d\) with a fixed ordering. The set \(X\) is \(k\)-inseparable if the convex hull of every \(k+1\) consecutive vertices is disjoint from every hyperplane spanned by other points of \(X\). Now consider an ordered set \(X\) of \(n\) points in general position in \({\mathbb R}^d\), and let \(k=\lfloor (n-d)/2\rfloor\). If \(X\) is \(k\)-inseparable, then the convex hull of \(X\) is a cyclic \(d\)-polytope. In even dimensions the converse holds: the vertex set of a cyclic \(2m\)-polytope with \(n\) vertices is \(k\)-separable, for \(k=\lfloor (2m-d)/2\rfloor\).

Recommendations

Cited in

(16)

This page was built for publication: Characterizations of cyclic polytopes

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2490669)