The combinatorial structure of spatial STIT tessellations (Q377484)

A random tessellation of a \(d\)-dimensional Euclidean space is a locally finite family of pairwise non-overlapping \(d\)-dimensional random convex polytopes (called the cells of the tessellation) that cover the whole space. The most popular models are hyperplane or Voronoi tessellations, where mainly the Poisson case has been studied. All these tessellations share the property of being side-to-side or facet-to-facet in higher dimensions. In recent years there has been a growing interest also in tessellation models that do not fulfill this property. In [the second author and \textit{R. Cowan}, Adv. Appl. Probab. 43, No. 4, 963--984 (2011; Zbl 1238.60017)] a first systematic study of the complications has been presented when a tessellation is not side-to-side or facet-to-facet. Among the models of subsequent cell divisions, the iteration stable or STIT (stable under iteration) tessellations were of particular interest because of the number of analytically available results, see [\textit{R. Cowan}, Adv. Appl. Probab. 45, No. 2, 295--311 (2013; Zbl 1278.60021); \textit{J. Mecke} et al. , J. Contemp. Math. Anal., Armen. Acad. Sci. 42, No. 1, 28--43 (2007); translation from Izv. Nats. Akad. Nauk Armen., Mat. 42, No. 1, 39--60 (2007; Zbl 1155.60005); \textit{W. Nagel} and the second author, Image Anal. Stereol. 27, No. 1, 29--37 (2008; Zbl 1168.60006); the authors and \textit{W. Nagel}, Adv. Appl. Probab. 44, No. 3, 635--654 (2012; Zbl 1262.60015)]. A detailed combinatorial analysis of planar STIT tessellations has been carried out in [Zbl 1278.60021] and [\textit{W. Nagel} and the second author, Rend. Circ. Mat. Palermo Ser. II, 77, 441--458 (2006; Zbl 1111.60009)]. The aim of this paper is to study the combinatorial structure of STIT tessellations in \({\mathbb R}^3\) and to continue the work initiated in [Zbl 1168.60006; Zbl 1262.60015 and the authors, Image Anal. Stereol. 29, No. 3, 143--157 (2010; Zbl 1215.60008)]. The structure of spatial STIT tessellations is very rich and considerably more complex compared with the planar case. This is mainly due to the fact that they do not only have \(T\)-shaped vertices as in the planar case, but also vertices of so-called \(X\)-type. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 recalls the construction of STIT tessellations. The main results of the paper are the content of Section 3. The discussion of the results is presented in Section 4, whereas all proofs are in the final Section 5.