Flat regular polytopes (Q1387616)

The paper is related to the known amalgamation problem from the theory of abstract regular polytopes: when does there exist a regular \((n+1)\)-polytope \(P\) whose facets are isomorphic to \(P_1\) and whose vertex-figures are isomorphic to \(P_2\), where \(P_1, P_2\) are given regular \(n\)-polytopes? Under certain conditions on \(P_1\) and \(P_2\) the answer is positive and involves flat polytopes. The authors describe an analogous but wider class of constructions, referring to the more difficult problem of preassigning arbitrary faces and co-faces of polytopes of higher rank, which involve again flat polytopes. In two main theorems, they give the solution to this generalized amalgamation problem under the assumption that the faces and co-faces satisfy the so-called flat amalgamation property. Further on, it is shown that many important classes of polytopes have the flat amalgamation property, and examples of flat polytopes with interesting topological properties are studied.