Vertex-faithful regular polyhedra (Q785811)

An abstract regular polyhedron \(\mathcal{P}\) is said to be vertex-faithful if its automorphism group \(\varGamma\) acts faithfully on its vertices; in other words, the only element of \(\varGamma\) that fixes every vertex of \(\mathcal{P}\) is the identity. In particular, if \(\mathcal{P}\) is vertex-describable, in that each face of \(\mathcal{P}\) is determined by its vertices, the \(\mathcal{P}\) is vertex-faithful. At the opposite end of the spectrum, \(\mathcal{P}\) is called (combinatorially) flat if each vertex of \(\mathcal{P}\) is incident with each facet. If \(\mathcal{P}\) is non-flat of type \(\{p,q\}\), then it is shown to have a vertex-faithful quotient \(\mathcal{Q}\) of type \(\{p,q'\}\) with the same number of vertices as \(\mathcal{P}\), for some divisor \(q' \geq 3\) of \(q\). Thus the treatment of polyhedra with a given size of vertex-set depends on whether they are flat or non-flat; we sample cases of the latter. If the vertex-faithful \(\mathcal{P}\) of type \(\{p,q\}\) has \(v\) vertices, then \(q \leq v\), with strict inequality if \(\mathcal{P}\) is orientable. In the case \(q = v\), the polyhedron is uniquely \((\{4,4\}_{(q/2,0)})^{\pi\delta}\), with \(q \geq 6\) and \(q/2\) odd; this polyhedron is the dual of the Petrial of a regular toroid. The authors then study those polyhedra whose vertex-faithful quotient is this polyhedron. They go on to look at vertex-faithful polyhedra with \(v\) vertices when \(v\) is small, a prime \(b \geq 7\) or twice a prime. In the last case, \(\mathcal{P}\) is flat or \((\{4,4\}_{(b,0)})^{\pi\delta}\). With \( v = b^2\), one has only the toroid \(\{4,4\}_{(b,0)}\) or its Petrial. The authors provide many tables of regular polyhedra with few vertices, which should be a mine of information for interested researchers.