Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:43:31.800Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Zigzag Structures of Simple Two-Faced Polyhedra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2005

MICHEL DEZA
Affiliation:
LIGA, ENS/CNRS, Paris and Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo (e-mail: Michel.Deza@ens.fr)
MATHIEU DUTOUR
Affiliation:
LIGA, ENS/CNRS, Paris and The Hebrew University, Jerusalem (e-mail: Mathieu.Dutour@ens.fr)

Abstract

A zigzag in a plane graph is a circuit of edges, such that any two, but not three, consecutive edges belong to the same face. A railroad in a plane graph is a circuit of hexagonal faces, such that any hexagon is adjacent to its neighbours on opposite edges. A graph without a railroad is called tight. We consider the zigzag and railroad structures of general 3-valent plane graph and, especially, of simple two-faced polyhedra, i.e., 3-valent 3-polytopes with only $a$-gonal and $b$-gonal faces, where $3 \leq a < b \leq 6$; the main cases are $(a,b)=(3,6), (4,6)$ and $(5,6)$ (the fullerenes).

We completely describe the zigzag structure for the case $(a,b)\,{=}\,(3,6)$. For the case $(a,b)\,{=}\,(4,6)$ we describe symmetry groups, classify all tight graphs with simple zigzags and give the upper bound 9 for the number of zigzags in general tight graphs. For the remaining case $(a,b)\,{=}\,(5,6)$ we give a construction realizing a prescribed zigzag structure.

Type
Paper
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)