Large spherical simplexes (Q1180130)

In earlier papers by the authors, it was established that, in each of spherical euclidean and hyperbolic spaces of dimension \(n\), for every \(\ell>0\) there exists a minimum positive number \(\lambda=\lambda_ n(\ell)<\ell\) such that a simplex can be realized whenever its edge- lengths fall in the interval \([\lambda,\ell]\). In spherical space, there is an additional restriction: \(\ell\) can be no larger than the edge- length \(\ell^*_ n\) of the partition of the \((n-1)\)-sphere by \(n\) regular simplices. However, certainly spherical simplices exist with some edge-lengths greater than \(\ell^*_ n\). In this paper, the authors investigate this latter situation. They show that, as long as \(\ell\leq \ell^*_{n-1}\) (this condition is implicit in the result), then a proposed assignment of edge-lengths is realizable if the largest \(\ell\) satisfies \(\ell>\ell^*_ n\) and the smallest \(s\) satisfies \(\lambda_ n(\ell)\leq s\leq \mu_ n(\ell)\), where \(\lambda_ n(\ell)\) and \(\mu_ n(\ell)\) are the circumradius and twice the altitude, respectively, of a regular spherical \((n-1)\)-simplex of edge-length \(\ell\).