Realizations of abstract regular polytopes from a representation theoretic view

DOI10.1007/S00010-016-0434-YMaRDI QIDQ727953zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 21 December 2016

Published in Aequationes Mathematicae (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07066

abstract regular polytope finite group real representation realization cone string C-group

Finite automorphism groups of algebraic, geometric, or combinatorial structures (20B25) Ordinary representations and characters (20C15) Polyhedra and polytopes; regular figures, division of spaces (51M20) Symmetry properties of polytopes (52B15)

Abstract: Peter McMullen has developed a theory of realizations of abstract regular polytopes, and has shown that the realizations up to congruence form a pointed convex cone which is the direct product of certain irreducible subcones. We show that each of these subcones is isomorphic to a set of positive semi-definite hermitian matrices of dimension

m

over either the real numbers, the complex numbers or the quaternions. In particular, we correct an erroneous computation of the dimension of these subcones by McMullen and Monson. We show that the automorphism group of an abstract regular polytope can have an irreducible character

c h i

with

c h i e q o v e r l i n e c h i

and with arbitrarily large essential Wythoff dimension. This gives counterexamples to a result of Herman and Monson, which was derived from the erroneous computation mentioned before. We also discuss a relation between cosine vectors of certain pure realizations and the spherical functions appearing in the theory of Gelfand pairs.

Review text

In a sequence of papers, the reviewer has developed a theory of geometric realizations of abstract regular polytopes, with implications for groups, since abstract regular polytopes can be identified with their automorphism groups, which are string C-groups, namely, quotients of Coxeter groups that share many of their characteristic properties. In a natural way, these realizations form a convex cone. In [\textit{P. McMullen} and \textit{B. Monson}, Aequationes Math. 65, No. 1--2, 102--112 (2003; Zbl 1022.51019)], a mistaken assertion was made about the dimension of the subcone of the realization cone corresponding to a quaternionic representation of the automorphism group. In this wide-ranging paper, that looks at realization theory more from the view-point of representations themselves, among other things the author corrects this mistake. An observation made by the reviewer about realizations of the \(4\)-dimensional \(600\)-cell, in particular that the dimension of a pure realization is a square, is also explained here.

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