Polytopes with centrally symmetric faces

It is shown that if, for some 2≦j≦d-2, all thej-faces of ad-polytopeP are centrally symmetric, then all the faces ofP of every dimension are centrally symmetric.     

Some characterisations of the ellipsoid

We show that a convex bodyK of dimensiond≧3 is an ellipsoid if it has any of the following properties: (1) the “grazes” of all points close toK are flat, (2) all sections of small diameter are centrally symmetric, (3) parallel (d−1)-sections close to the boundary are width-equivalent, (4)K is strictly convex and all (d−1)-sections close to the boundary are centrally symmetric; the last two results are deduced from their 3-dimensional cases which were proved by Aitchison.     

Volumes of complementary projections of convex polytopes

The centrally symmetric convex polytopes whose images under orthogonal projection on to any pair of orthogonal complementary subspaces ofE ^d have numerically equal volumes are shown hare to be certain cartesian products of polygons and line segments. Ford3, the general projection property in fact follows from that for pairs of hyperplanes and lines. A conjecture is made about the problem in the non-centrally symmetric case.     

Über die Symmetriegruppen von regulärseitigen Polytopen

Convex polytopes are called regular faced, if all their facets are regular. It is known, that all regular faced 3-polytopes have a nontrivial symmetry group, and also alld-polytopes with centrally symmetric facets. Here it is shown, that there ecist in fact regular facedd-polytopes with trivial symmetry group, but only ford=4. The corresponding class of polytopes is studied.     

A Centrally Symmetric Version of the Cyclic Polytope

We define a centrally symmetric analogue of the cyclic polytope and study its facial structure. We conjecture that our polytopes provide asymptotically the largest number of faces in all dimensions among all centrally symmetric polytopes with n vertices of a given even dimension d=2k when d is fixed and n grows. For a fixed even dimension d=2k and an integer 1≤j<k we prove that the maximum possible number of j-dimensional faces of a centrally symmetric d-dimensional polytope with n vertices is at least for some c _j (d)>0 and at most as n grows. We show that c ₁(d)≥1−(d−1)⁻¹ and conjecture that the bound is best possible. Research of A. Barvinok partially supported by NSF grant DMS 0400617. Research of I. Novik partially supported by Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and NSF grant DMS-0500748.     

On neighborly families of convex bodies

A family of convex bodies in E^d is called neighborly if the intersection of every two of them is (d-1)-dimensional. In the present paper we prove that there is an infinite neighborly family of centrally symmetric convex bodies in E^d, d 3, such that every two of them are affinely equivalent (i.e., there is an affine transformation mapping one of them onto another), the bodies have large groups of affine automorphisms, and the volumes of the bodies are prescribed. We also prove that there is an infinite neighborly family of centrally symmetric convex bodies in E^d such that the bodies have large groups of symmetries. These two results are answers to a problem of B. Grünbaum (1963). We prove also that there exist arbitrarily large neighborly families of similar convex d-polytopes in E^d with prescribed diameters and with arbitrarily large groups of symmetries of the polytopes.     

Some remarks concerning kissing numbers,blocking numbers and covering numbers

This article shows an inequality concerning blocking numbers and Hadwiger's covering numbers and presents a strange phenomenon concerning kissing numbers and blocking numbers. As a simple corollary, we can improve the known upper bounds for Hadwiger's covering numbers ford-dimensional centrally symmetric convex bodies to 3 ^d –1.     

The isodiametric problem with lattice-point constraints

In this paper, the isodiametric problem for centrally symmetric convex bodies in the Euclidean d-space \Bbb R^d{\Bbb R}^d containing no interior non-zero point of a lattice L is studied. It is shown that the intersection of a suitable ball with the Dirichlet-Voronoi cell of 2L is extremal, i.e., it has minimum diameter among all bodies with the same volume. It is conjectured that these sets are the only extremal bodies, which is proved for all three dimensional and several prominent lattices.     

Arbitrarily large neighborly families of symmetric convex polytopes

A family of convex d-polytopes in E _d is called neighborly if every two of them have a (d–1)-dimensional intersection. Settling an old problem of B. Grünbaum, we show that there exist arbitrarily large neighborly families of centrally (or any other prescribed type of) symmetric convex d-poliytopes in E _d ,for all d3; moreover, they can all be congruent, if d4.A version of this paper has been written while the author visited R. K. Guy in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in the summer of 1981; the author wishes to thank Louise and Richard Guy for their warm hospitality.     

Translational tilings by a polytope, with multiplicity

We study the problem of covering ? ^d by overlapping translates of a convex polytope, such that almost every point of ? ^d is covered exactly k times. Such a covering of Euclidean space by a discrete set of translations is called a k-tiling. The investigation of simple tilings by translations (which we call 1-tilings in this context) began with the work of Fedorov [5] and Minkowski [15], and was later extended by Venkov and McMullen to give a complete characterization of all convex objects that 1-tile ? ^d . By contrast, for k ≥2, the collection of polytopes that k-tile is much wider than the collection of polytopes that 1-tile, and there is currently no known analogous characterization for the polytopes that k-tile. Here we first give the necessary conditions for polytopes P that k-tile, by proving that if P k-tiles ? ^d by translations, then it is centrally symmetric, and its facets are also centrally symmetric. These are the analogues of Minkowski’s conditions for 1-tiling polytopes, but it turns out that very new methods are necessary for the development of the theory. In the case that P has rational vertices, we also prove that the converse is true; that is, if P is a rational polytope, is centrally symmetric, and has centrally symmetric facets, then P must k-tile ? ^d for some positive integer k.     

On Kalai’s Conjectures Concerning Centrally Symmetric Polytopes

In 1989, Kalai stated three conjectures A, B, C of increasing strength concerning face numbers of centrally symmetric convex polytopes. The weakest conjecture, A, became known as the “3 ^d -conjecture.” It is well known that the three conjectures hold in dimensions d≤3. We show that in dimension 4 only conjectures A and B are valid, while conjecture C fails. Furthermore, we show that both conjectures B and C fail in all dimensions d≥5.     

Cubature Formulas of a Nonalgebraic Degree of Precision

We deal with cubature formulas that are exact for polynomials and also for polynomials multiplied by r, where r is the Euclidean distance to the origin. A general lower bound for the number of nodes for a specified degree of precision is given. This bound is improved for centrally symmetric integrals. A set of constraints (consistency conditions) is introduced for the construction of fully symmetric formulas. For one dimension and arbitrary degree, it is shown that the lower bound is sharp for centrally symmetric integrals. For higher dimensions, as an illustration, cubature formulas are only constructed for low degrees. March 6, 2000. Date revised: April 30, 2001. Date accepted: May 31, 2001.     

How Neighborly Can a Centrally Symmetric Polytope Be?

We show that there exist k-neighborly centrally symmetric d-dimensional polytopes with 2(n + d) vertices, where

Centrally symmetric polytopes with many faces

We present explicit constructions of centrally symmetric polytopes with many faces: (1) we construct a d-dimensional centrally symmetric polytope P with about 3 ^d/4 ≈ (1.316) ^d vertices such that every pair of non-antipodal vertices of P spans an edge of P, (2) for an integer k ≥ 2, we construct a d-dimensional centrally symmetric polytope P of an arbitrarily high dimension d and with an arbitrarily large number N of vertices such that for some 0 < δ _k < 1 at least (1 ? (δ _k ) ^d )( _k ^N ) k-subsets of the set of vertices span faces of P, and (3) for an integer k ≥ 2 and α > 0, we construct a centrally symmetric polytope Q with an arbitrarily large number of vertices N and of dimension d = k ^1+o(1) such that at least $(1 - k^{ - \alpha } )(_k^N )$ k-subsets of the set of vertices span faces of Q.     

An Upper and a Lower Bound Theorem for Combinatorial 4-Manifolds

In this paper we prove two inequalities. The first one gives a lower bound for the Euler characteristic of a tight combinatorial 4-manifold M under the additional assumptions that |M| is 1-connected, that M is a subcomplex of H (M) , and that H (M) is a centrally symmetric and simplicial d -polytope. The second inequality relates the Euler characteristic with the number of vertices of a combinatorial 4-manifold admitting a fixed-point free involution. Furthermore, we construct a new and highly symmetric 12-vertex triangulation of S ² x S ² realizing equality in each of these inequalities. Received January 23, 1996, and in revised form September 13, 1996.     

Even graphs

A nontrivial connected graph G is called even if for each vertex v of G there is a unique vertex v such that d(v, v ) = diam G. Special classes of even graphs are defined and compared to each other. In particular, an even graph G is called symmetric if d(u, v) + d(u, v ) = diam G for all u, v ∈ V(G). Several properties of even and symmetric even graphs are stated. For an even graph of order n and diameter d other than an even cycle it is shown that n ≥ 3d – 1 and conjectured that n ≥ 4d – 4. This conjecture is proved for symmetric even graphs and it is shown that for each pair of integers n, d with n even, d ≥ 2 and n ≥ 4d – 4 there exists an even graph of order n and diameter d. Several ways of constructing new even graphs from known ones are presented.     

On the vertex index of convex bodies

We introduce the vertex index, vein(K), of a given centrally symmetric convex body K⊂Rd, which, in a sense, measures how well K can be inscribed into a convex polytope with small number of vertices. This index is closely connected to the illumination parameter of a body, introduced earlier by the first named author, and, thus, related to the famous conjecture in Convex Geometry about covering of a d-dimensional body by d² smaller positively homothetic copies. We provide asymptotically sharp estimates (up to a logarithmic term) of this index in the general case. More precisely, we show that for every centrally symmetric convex body K⊂Rd one has

     

A criterion for finite lattice coverings

For a centrally symmetric convex and a covering lattice L for K, a lattice polygon P is called a covering polygon, if . We prove that P is a covering polygon, if and only if its boundary bd(P) is covered by (L ∩ P) + K. Further we show that this characterization is false for non-symmetric planar convex bodies and in Euclidean d–space, d ≥ 3, even for the unit ball K = B ^d. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

On a conjecture of lindenstrauss

It is proved that eachn-dimensional centrally symmetric convex polyhedron admits a 2-dimensional central section having at least 2n vertices. Some other related results are obtained and some unsolved problems are mentioned. Research supported in part by the National Science Foundation, U.S.A. (NSF-GP-378).     

A Markov-Type Inequality for Multivariate Polynomials on a Convex Body

A Markov-type inequality for the k-homogeneous part of a multivariate polynomial on a convex centrally symmetric body is given and an extremal polynomial is found. This generalizes and extends some estimates for univariate and multivariate polynomials obtained by Markov, Bernstein, Visser, Reimer, and Rack.