In geometric graph theory, a branch of mathematics, a polyhedral graph is the undirected graph formed from the vertices and edges of a convex polyhedron. Alternatively, in purely graph-theoretic terms, the polyhedral graphs are the 3-vertex-connected, planar graphs.
The Schlegel diagram of a convex polyhedron represents its vertices and edges as points and line segments in the Euclidean plane, forming a subdivision of an outer convex polygon into smaller convex polygons (a convex drawing of the graph of the polyhedron). It has no crossings, so every polyhedral graph is also a planar graph. Additionally, by Balinski's theorem, it is a 3-vertex-connected graph.
According to Steinitz's theorem, these two graph-theoretic properties are enough to completely characterize the polyhedral graphs: they are exactly the 3-vertex-connected planar graphs. That is, whenever a graph is both planar and 3-vertex-connected, there exists a polyhedron whose vertices and edges form an isomorphic graph. [1] [2] Given such a graph, a representation of it as a subdivision of a convex polygon into smaller convex polygons may be found using the Tutte embedding. [3]
Tait conjectured that every cubic polyhedral graph (that is, a polyhedral graph in which each vertex is incident to exactly three edges) has a Hamiltonian cycle, but this conjecture was disproved by a counterexample of W. T. Tutte, the polyhedral but non-Hamiltonian Tutte graph. If one relaxes the requirement that the graph be cubic, there are much smaller non-Hamiltonian polyhedral graphs. The graph with the fewest vertices and edges is the 11-vertex and 18-edge Herschel graph, [4] and there also exists an 11-vertex non-Hamiltonian polyhedral graph in which all faces are triangles, the Goldner–Harary graph. [5]
More strongly, there exists a constant (the shortness exponent) and an infinite family of polyhedral graphs such that the length of the longest simple path of an -vertex graph in the family is . [6] [7]
Duijvestijn provides a count of the polyhedral graphs with up to 26 edges; [8] The number of these graphs with 6, 7, 8, ... edges is
One may also enumerate the polyhedral graphs by their numbers of vertices: for graphs with 4, 5, 6, ... vertices, the number of polyhedral graphs is
![Orthographic projections and Schlegel diagrams with Hamiltonian cycles of the vertices of the five platonic solids - only the octahedron has an Eulerian path or cycle, by extending its path with the dotted one
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The graphs of the Platonic solids have been called Platonic graphs. As well as having all the other properties of polyhedral graphs, these are symmetric graphs, and all of them have Hamiltonian cycles. [9] There are five of these graphs:
A polyhedral graph is the graph of a simple polyhedron if it is cubic (every vertex has three edges), and it is the graph of a simplicial polyhedron if it is a maximal planar graph. For example, the tetrahedral, cubical, and dodecahedral graphs are simple; the tetrahedral, octahedral, and icosahedral graphs are simplicial.
The Halin graphs, graphs formed from a planar embedded tree by adding an outer cycle connecting all of the leaves of the tree, form another important subclass of the polyhedral graphs.
In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces. It has twelve edges and eight vertices. It can be represented as a rectangular cuboid with six square faces, or a parallelepiped with equal edges. It is an example of many type of solids: Platonic solid, regular polyhedron, parallelohedron, zonohedron, and plesiohedron. The dual polyhedron of a cube is the regular octahedron.
In geometry, every polyhedron is associated with a second dual structure, where the vertices of one correspond to the faces of the other, and the edges between pairs of vertices of one correspond to the edges between pairs of faces of the other. Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all can also be constructed as geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron.
In geometry, an octahedron is a polyhedron with eight faces. One special case is the regular octahedron, a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, four of which meet at each vertex. Regular octahedra occur in nature as crystal structures. Many types of irregular octahedra also exist, including both convex and non-convex shapes.
In geometry, a polyhedron is a three-dimensional figure with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices.
In mathematics, Tait's conjecture states that "Every 3-connected planar cubic graph has a Hamiltonian cycle through all its vertices". It was proposed by P. G. Tait and disproved by W. T. Tutte, who constructed a counterexample with 25 faces, 69 edges and 46 vertices. Several smaller counterexamples, with 21 faces, 57 edges and 38 vertices, were later proved minimal by Holton & McKay (1988). The condition that the graph be 3-regular is necessary due to polyhedra such as the rhombic dodecahedron, which forms a bipartite graph with six degree-four vertices on one side and eight degree-three vertices on the other side; because any Hamiltonian cycle would have to alternate between the two sides of the bipartition, but they have unequal numbers of vertices, the rhombic dodecahedron is not Hamiltonian.
In geometry, the triangular bipyramid is the hexahedron with six triangular faces, constructed by attaching two tetrahedra face-to-face. The same shape is also called the triangular dipyramid or trigonal bipyramid. If these tetrahedra are regular, all faces of triangular bipyramid are equilateral. It is an example of a deltahedron, composite polyhedron, and Johnson solid.
A convex polytope is a special case of a polytope, having the additional property that it is also a convex set contained in the -dimensional Euclidean space . Most texts use the term "polytope" for a bounded convex polytope, and the word "polyhedron" for the more general, possibly unbounded object. Others allow polytopes to be unbounded. The terms "bounded/unbounded convex polytope" will be used below whenever the boundedness is critical to the discussed issue. Yet other texts identify a convex polytope with its boundary.
Geometric graph theory in the broader sense is a large and amorphous subfield of graph theory, concerned with graphs defined by geometric means. In a stricter sense, geometric graph theory studies combinatorial and geometric properties of geometric graphs, meaning graphs drawn in the Euclidean plane with possibly intersecting straight-line edges, and topological graphs, where the edges are allowed to be arbitrary continuous curves connecting the vertices; thus, it can be described as "the theory of geometric and topological graphs". Geometric graphs are also known as spatial networks.
In geometry, an edge is a particular type of line segment joining two vertices in a polygon, polyhedron, or higher-dimensional polytope. In a polygon, an edge is a line segment on the boundary, and is often called a polygon side. In a polyhedron or more generally a polytope, an edge is a line segment where two faces meet. A segment joining two vertices while passing through the interior or exterior is not an edge but instead is called a diagonal.
In polyhedral combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, Steinitz's theorem is a characterization of the undirected graphs formed by the edges and vertices of three-dimensional convex polyhedra: they are exactly the 3-vertex-connected planar graphs. That is, every convex polyhedron forms a 3-connected planar graph, and every 3-connected planar graph can be represented as the graph of a convex polyhedron. For this reason, the 3-connected planar graphs are also known as polyhedral graphs.
In the mathematical field of graph theory, the bidiakis cube is a 3-regular graph with 12 vertices and 18 edges.
In the mathematical field of graph theory, the Tutte graph is a 3-regular graph with 46 vertices and 69 edges named after W. T. Tutte. It has chromatic number 3, chromatic index 3, girth 4 and diameter 8.
In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, the Herschel graph is a bipartite undirected graph with 11 vertices and 18 edges. It is a polyhedral graph, and is the smallest polyhedral graph that does not have a Hamiltonian cycle, a cycle passing through all its vertices. It is named after British astronomer Alexander Stewart Herschel, because of Herschel's studies of Hamiltonian cycles in polyhedral graphs.
In the mathematical field of graph theory, the Goldner–Harary graph is a simple undirected graph with 11 vertices and 27 edges. It is named after A. Goldner and Frank Harary, who proved in 1975 that it was the smallest non-Hamiltonian maximal planar graph. The same graph had already been given as an example of a non-Hamiltonian simplicial polyhedron by Branko Grünbaum in 1967.
In polyhedral combinatorics, a branch of mathematics, Balinski's theorem is a statement about the graph-theoretic structure of three-dimensional convex polyhedra and higher-dimensional convex polytopes. It states that, if one forms an undirected graph from the vertices and edges of a convex d-dimensional convex polyhedron or polytope, then the resulting graph is at least d-vertex-connected: the removal of any d − 1 vertices leaves a connected subgraph. For instance, for a three-dimensional polyhedron, even if two of its vertices are removed, for any pair of vertices there will still exist a path of vertices and edges connecting the pair.
Barnette's conjecture is an unsolved problem in graph theory, a branch of mathematics, concerning Hamiltonian cycles in graphs. It is named after David W. Barnette, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis; it states that every bipartite polyhedral graph with three edges per vertex has a Hamiltonian cycle.
In combinatorial mathematics, an Apollonian network is an undirected graph formed by a process of recursively subdividing a triangle into three smaller triangles. Apollonian networks may equivalently be defined as the planar 3-trees, the maximal planar chordal graphs, the uniquely 4-colorable planar graphs, and the graphs of stacked polytopes. They are named after Apollonius of Perga, who studied a related circle-packing construction.
In geometry and polyhedral combinatorics, the Kleetope of a polyhedron or higher-dimensional convex polytope P is another polyhedron or polytope PK formed by replacing each facet of P with a pyramid. In some cases, the pyramid is chosen to have regular sides, often producing a non-convex polytope; alternatively, by using sufficiently shallow pyramids, the results may remain convex. Kleetopes are named after Victor Klee, although the same concept was known under other names long before the work of Klee.
In graph drawing and geometric graph theory, a Tutte embedding or barycentric embedding of a simple, 3-vertex-connected, planar graph is a crossing-free straight-line embedding with the properties that the outer face is a convex polygon and that each interior vertex is at the average of its neighbors' positions. If the outer polygon is fixed, this condition on the interior vertices determines their position uniquely as the solution to a system of linear equations. Solving the equations geometrically produces a planar embedding. Tutte's spring theorem, proven by W. T. Tutte, states that this unique solution is always crossing-free, and more strongly that every face of the resulting planar embedding is convex. It is called the spring theorem because such an embedding can be found as the equilibrium position for a system of springs representing the edges of the graph.
In the mathematical field of graph theory, the Barnette–Bosák–Lederberg graph is a cubic polyhedral graph with no Hamiltonian cycle, the smallest such graph possible. It was discovered in the mid-1960s by Joshua Lederberg, David Barnette, and Juraj Bosák, after whom it is named. It has 38 vertices and 57 edges.
