Equifacetted 3-spheres as topes of nonpolytopal matroid polytopes (Q1892415)

The authors investigate simplicial 3-spheres with the property that the links of all vertices are combinatorially equivalent (so-called equilinked 3-spheres) and simple 3-spheres all whose facets are combinatorially equivalent (equifacetted 3-spheres). More precisely, they give a complete enumeration of such 3-spheres with up to 10 facets, and within that class they also clarify the question whether these 3-spheres are boundaries of 4-polytopes. Thus, the results given here and an obtained list of matroid polytopes with small vertex numbers might serve as a starting point for further research around the Steinitz problem, also by using matroid theory. In addition, these results can be viewed as contributions to the theory of tilings of Euclidean space. It should be remarked that the authors show the existence of simple equifacetted 3- spheres, which do not appear as boundaries of 4-polytopes, by means of a well-known convex 3-polytope (playing the role of the respective facet): it is the truncated rhombohedron from Dürer's famous copper engraving Melencolia I.