To my Advisor Victor Matveevich Buchstaber on the occasion of his seventieth birthday
Abstract
We construct self-intersecting flexible cross-polytopes in the spaces of constant curvature, that is, in Euclidean spaces \(\mathbb{E}^n\), spheres \(\mathbb{S}^n\), and Lobachevsky spaces Λn of all dimensions n. In dimensions n ≥ 5, these are the first examples of flexible polyhedra. Moreover, we classify all flexible cross-polytopes in each of the spaces \(\mathbb{E}^n\), \(\mathbb{S}^n\), and Λn. For each type of flexible cross-polytopes, we provide an explicit parametrization of the flexion by either rational or elliptic functions.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
A. L. Cauchy, “Deuxi`eme mémoire sur les polygones et les poly`edres,” J. Éc. Polytech. 9, 87–98 (1813).
R. Bricard, “Mémoire sur la théorie de l’octa`edre articulé,” J. Math. Pures Appl., Sér. 5, 3, 113–148 (1897).
G. T. Bennett, “Deformable octahedra,” Proc. London Math. Soc., Ser. 2, 10, 309–343 (1912).
R. Connelly, “A counterexample to the rigidity conjecture for polyhedra,” Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 47, 333–338 (1977).
K. Steffen, “A symmetric flexible Connelly sphere with only nine vertices,” Handwritten note (IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette, 1978), http://www.math.cornell.edu/~connelly/Steffen.pdf
M. I. Shtogrin, “A flexible disk with a handle,” Usp. Mat. Nauk 68(5), 177–178 (2013) [Russ. Math. Surv. 68, 951–953 (2013)].
V. A. Aleksandrov, “A new example of a flexible polyhedron,” Sib. Mat. Zh. 36(6), 1215–1224 (1995) [Sib. Math. J. 36, 1049–1057 (1995)].
H. Stachel, “Flexible octahedra in the hyperbolic space,” in Non-Euclidean Geometries: János Bolyai Memorial Volume, Ed. by A. Prékopa et al. (Springer, New York, 2006), Math. Appl. 581, pp. 209–225.
H. Stachel, “Flexible cross-polytopes in the Euclidean 4-space,” J. Geom. Graph. 4(2), 159–167 (2000).
R. Connelly, “Conjectures and open questions in rigidity,” in Proc. Int. Congr. Math., Helsinki, 1978 (Acad. Sci. Fennica, Helsinki, 1980), Vol. 1, pp. 407–414.
I. Kh. Sabitov, “Volume of a polyhedron as a function of its metric,” Fundam. Prikl. Mat. 2(4), 1235–1246 (1996).
I. Kh. Sabitov, “A generalized Heron-Tartaglia formula and some of its consequences,” Mat. Sb. 189(10), 105–134 (1998) [Sb. Math. 189, 1533–1561 (1998)].
I. Kh. Sabitov, “The volume as a metric invariant of polyhedra,” Discrete Comput. Geom. 20(4), 405–425 (1998).
R. Connelly, I. Sabitov, and A. Walz, “The bellows conjecture,” Beitr. Algebra Geom. 38(1), 1–10 (1997).
A. A. Gaifullin, “Sabitov polynomials for volumes of polyhedra in four dimensions,” Adv. Math. 252, 586–611 (2014); arXiv: 1108.6014 [math.MG].
A. A. Gaifullin, “Generalization of Sabitov’s theorem to polyhedra of arbitrary dimensions,” Discrete Comput. Geom. 52(2), 195–220 (2014); arXiv: 1210.5408 [math.MG].
R. Alexander, “Lipschitzian mappings and total mean curvature of polyhedral surfaces. I,” Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 288, 661–678 (1985).
I. V. Izmestiev, “Deformation of quadrilaterals and addition on elliptic curves,” Preprint (Freie Univ. Berlin, 2013).
G. Darboux, “De l’emploi des fonctions elliptiques dans la théorie du quadrilat`ere plan,” Bull. Sci. Math. Astron., Sér. 2, 3(1), 109–128 (1879).
R. Connelly, “An attack on rigidity,” Preprint (1974); Russ. transl. in Research on the Metric Theory of Surfaces (Mir, Moscow, 1980), pp. 164–209.
A. Erdélyi, W. Magnus, F. Oberhettinger, and F. G. Tricomi, Higher Transcendental Functions (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1953), Vol. 2, Bateman Manuscript Project.
E. T. Whittaker and G. N. Watson, A Course of Modern Analysis, 3rd ed. (Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1920).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Published in Russian in Trudy Matematicheskogo Instituta imeni V.A. Steklova, 2014, Vol. 286, pp. 88–128.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gaifullin, A.A. Flexible cross-polytopes in spaces of constant curvature. Proc. Steklov Inst. Math. 286, 77–113 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0081543814060066
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0081543814060066