Tight chiral polyhedra (Q1747996)

In this article, the author determines all Schläfli symbols \(\{p,q\}\) corresponding to tight chiral polyhedra. This is a continuation of the author's work on tight regular polyhedra [the author and \textit{D. Pellicer}, J. Algebr. Comb. 43, No. 3, 665--691 (2016; Zbl 1366.52013)]. An \textit{abstract polyhedron} is a poset containing elements of three ranks (vertices, edges, faces) that satisfy order (i.e., incidence) properties reminiscent of ordinary polyhedra. A \textit{flag} in a polyhedron consists of a vertex, an edge, and a face that are mutually incident. The automorphism group of the polyhedron acts on these flags; the polyhedron is said to be \textit{chiral} if its collection of flags has two orbits under the action of the automorphism group and each flag is adjacent to a unique flag in the opposite orbit. For a regular or chiral polyhedron, each vertex is incident to \(q\) edges and each face is incident to \(p\) edges; in this case the polyhedron's Schläfli symbol is \(\{p,q\}\). It is relatively easy to see that a polyhedron with Schläfli symbol \(\{p,q\}\) possesses at least \(2pq\) flags. If this minimum is achieved then the polyhedron is said to be \textit{tight}. In Theorem 5.2, the author determines all values of \(p\), \(q\) such that \(\{p,q\}\) is a Schläfli symbol for a tight chiral polyhedron.