Cyclic polygons with rational sides and area (Q2472410)

The authors study rational-sided, cyclic \(n\)-gons with rational area. A short survey of well-known results on triangles satisfying these hypotheses serves as motivation for investigating properties shared by polygons of this class. In this vein it is shown that for \(n\leq 6\) any \(n\)-gon with integer sides has integer area and even perimeter. Another line of inquiry is to determine whether an \(n\)-gon is constructible from smaller \(m\)-gons having the required properties. A cyclic \(n\)-gon with rational sides and area is called radially decomposable if its vertices and the circumcenter determine \(n\) isosceles triangles with rational sides and area. A related notion of diagonally decomposability is identified when the \(n\)-gon of interest can be subdivided into two disjoint rational area polygons using a rational diagonal of the initial \(n\)-gon. It turns out that for quadrilaterals and pentagons these properties hold simultaneously, while for hexagons the two notions of decomposability are distinct. There are known parameterizations, due to Brahmagupta and Euler, giving all triangles with rational sides and area. The present authors give three parameter families of cyclic quadrilaterals with rational sides and area. For \(n>6\), approximate techniques are used to discover examples of rational area cyclic \(n\)-gons. The experiments suggest various open problems, and the authors close the paper by explicitly stating two conjectures.