Change of polytope volumes under Möbius transformations and the circumcenter of mass (Q6624201)

A standard algorithm for finding the center of mass of a polytope,\(\mbox{cm}(P)\), is to triangulate it (dissect it into simplices), find the barycenter and the volume of each simplex, and take the weighted mean of the barycenters. As the center of mass can also be defined via an integral over \(P\), this is independent of the triangulation used. It has been known for some time that if \textit{circumcenters} are taken instead, the volume-weighted mean is still invariant: the resulting point \(\mbox{ccm}(P)\) is called the ``circumcenter of mass'' of the polytope. This paper clarifies this result by giving a global definition for \(\mbox{ccm}(P)\).\N\NThe author shows that every polytope \(P\) has a \textit{Möbius center} \(\mbox{m}(P)\) such that the relative rate of change of volume of \(P\) for any infinitesimal Möbius transformation \(\xi\) is \(\mbox{div } \xi(\mbox{m}(P))\). For a \(d\)-simplex this is just the medial center (known as the nine-point center when \(d=2\).) Again, this may be computed globally or via triangulation. The global definition for \(\mbox{ccm}(P)\) follows via the \(d\)-dimensional generalization of properties of the Euler line.