Regular 4-polytope


In mathematics, a regular 4-polytope or regular polychoron is a regular four-dimensional polytope. They are the four-dimensional analogues of the regular polyhedra in three dimensions and the regular polygons in two dimensions.
There are six convex and ten star regular 4-polytopes, giving a total of sixteen.

History

The convex regular 4-polytopes were first described by the Swiss mathematician Ludwig Schläfli in the mid-19th century. He discovered that there are precisely six such figures.
Schläfli also found four of the regular star 4-polytopes: the grand 120-cell, great stellated 120-cell, grand 600-cell, and great grand stellated 120-cell. He skipped the remaining six because he would not allow forms that failed the Euler characteristic on cells or vertex figures. That excludes cells and vertex figures such as the great dodecahedron and small stellated dodecahedron,5

Construction

The existence of a regular 4-polytope is constrained by the existence of the regular polyhedra which form its cells and a dihedral angle constraint
to ensure that the cells meet to form a closed 3-surface.
The six convex and ten star polytopes described are the only solutions to these constraints.
There are four nonconvex Schläfli symbols that have valid cells and vertex figures, and pass the dihedral test, but fail to produce finite figures:,,,3,4

Regular convex 4-polytopes

The regular convex 4-polytopes are the four-dimensional analogues of the Platonic solids in three dimensions and the convex regular polygons in two dimensions.
Each convex regular 4-polytope is bounded by a set of 3-dimensional cells which are all Platonic solids of the same type and size. These are fitted together along their respective faces in a regular fashion, forming the surface of the 4-polytope which is a closed, curved 3-dimensional space.

Properties

Like their 3-dimensional analogues, the convex regular 4-polytopes can be naturally ordered by size as a measure of 4-dimensional content for the same radius. Each greater polytope in the sequence is rounder than its predecessor, enclosing more content within the same radius. The 4-simplex has the smallest content, and the 120-cell has the largest.
The following table lists some properties of the six convex regular 4-polytopes. The symmetry groups of these 4-polytopes are all Coxeter groups and given in the notation described in that article. The number following the name of the group is the order of the group.
John Conway advocated the names simplex, orthoplex, tesseract, octaplex or polyoctahedron, tetraplex or polytetrahedron, and dodecaplex or polydodecahedron.
Norman Johnson advocated the names n-cell, or pentachoron, hexadecachoron, tesseract or octachoron, icositetrachoron, hexacosichoron, and hecatonicosachoron, coining the term polychoron being a 4D analogy to the 3D polyhedron, and 2D polygon, expressed from the Greek roots poly and choros.
The Euler characteristic for all 4-polytopes is zero, we have the 4-dimensional analogue of Euler's polyhedral formula:
where Nk denotes the number of k-faces in the polytope.
The topology of any given 4-polytope is defined by its Betti numbers and torsion coefficients.

As configurations

A regular 4-polytope can be completely described as a configuration matrix containing counts of its component elements. The rows and columns correspond to vertices, edges, faces, and cells. The diagonal numbers say how many of each element occur in the whole 4-polytope. The non-diagonal numbers say how many of the column's element occur in or at the row's element. For example, there are 2 vertices in each edge, and 2 cells meet at each face, in any regular 4-polytope. The configuration for the dual polytope can be obtained by rotating the matrix by 180 degrees.
5-cell
16-cell
8-cell
24-cell
600-cell
120-cell

Visualization

The following table shows some 2-dimensional projections of these 4-polytopes. Various other visualizations can be found in the external links below. The Coxeter-Dynkin diagram graphs are also given below the Schläfli symbol.

Regular star (Schläfli–Hess) 4-polytopes

The Schläfli-Hess 4-polytopes are the complete set of 10 regular self-intersecting star polychora. They are named in honor of their discoverers: Ludwig Schläfli and Edmund Hess. Each is represented by a Schläfli symbol in which one of the numbers is [pentagram|]. They are thus analogous to the regular nonconvex Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra, which are in turn analogous to the pentagram.

Names

Their names given here were given by John Conway, extending Cayley's names for the Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra: along with stellated and great, he adds a grand modifier. Conway offered these operational definitions:
  1. stellation – replaces edges with longer edges in same lines.
  2. greatening – replaces the faces with large ones in same planes.
  3. aggrandizement – replaces the cells with large ones in same 3-spaces.
John Conway names the 10 forms from 3 regular celled 4-polytopes: pT=polytetrahedron, pI=polyicosahedron, and pD=polydodecahedron, with prefix modifiers: g, a, and s for great, grand, and stellated. The final stellation, the great grand stellated polydodecahedron contains them all as gaspD.

Symmetry

All ten polychora have hexacosichoric symmetry. They are generated from 6 related Goursat tetrahedra rational-order symmetry groups:,,,,, and .
Each group has 2 regular star-polychora, except for two groups which are self-dual, having only one. So there are 4 dual-pairs and 2 self-dual forms among the ten regular star polychora.

Properties

Note:
The cells, their faces, the polygonal edge figures and polyhedral vertex figures are identified by their Schläfli symbols.
Name
Conway 		Orthogonal
projection		Schläfli
Coxeter		C
F
E
V
Dens.χ
Icosahedral 120-cell
polyicosahedron
120
[regular icosahedron|]
1200
[Triangle|]
720
Pentagram|
120
[Great dodecahedron|]
4480
Small stellated 120-cell
stellated polydodecahedron
120
[Small stellated dodecahedron|]
720
[Pentagram|]
1200
[Triangle|]
120
[Dodecahedron|]
4−480
Great 120-cell
great polydodecahedron
120
[Great dodecahedron|]
720
[Pentagon|]
720
[Pentagon|]
120
[Small stellated dodecahedron|]
60
Grand 120-cell
grand polydodecahedron
120
[Dodecahedron|]
720
[Pentagon|]
720
[Pentagram|]
120
[Great icosahedron|]
200
Great stellated 120-cell
great stellated polydodecahedron
120
[Great stellated dodecahedron|]
720
[Pentagram|]
720
[Pentagon|]
120
[regular icosahedron|]
200
Grand stellated 120-cell
grand stellated polydodecahedron
120
[Small stellated dodecahedron|]
720
[Pentagram|]
720
[Pentagram|]
120
[Great dodecahedron|]
660
Great grand 120-cell
great grand polydodecahedron
120
[Great dodecahedron|]
720
[Pentagon|]
1200
[Triangle|]
120
[Great stellated dodecahedron|]
76−480
Great icosahedral 120-cell
great polyicosahedron
120
[Great icosahedron|]
1200
[Triangle|]
720
[Pentagon|]
120
[Small stellated dodecahedron|]
76480
Grand 600-cell
grand polytetrahedron
600
[Tetrahedron|]
1200
[Triangle|]
720
[Pentagram|]
120
[Great icosahedron|]
1910
Great grand stellated 120-cell
great grand stellated polydodecahedron
120
[Great stellated dodecahedron|]
720
[Pentagram|]
1200
[Triangle|]
600
[Tetrahedron|]
1910