Concurrent normals problem for convex polytopes and Euclidean distance degree

I. Nasonov, G. Panina*, D. Siersma

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

It is conjectured since long that for any convex body P⊂Rn there exists a point in its interior which belongs to at least 2n normals from different points on the boundary of P. The conjecture is known to be true for n=2,3,4. We treat the same problem for convex polytopes in R3. It turns out that the PL concurrent normals problem differs a lot from the smooth one. One almost immediately proves that a convex polytope in R3 has 8 normals to its boundary emanating from some point in its interior. Moreover, we conjecture that each simple polytope in R3 has a point in its interior with 10 normals to the boundary. We confirm the conjecture for all tetrahedra and triangular prisms and give a sufficient condition for a simple polytope to have a point with 10 normals. Other related topics (average number of normals, minimal number of normals from an interior point, other dimensions) are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
JournalActa Mathematica Hungarica
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 6 Nov 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2024.

Funding

This work was done under support of the grant No. 075-15-2022-289 for creation and development of Euler International Mathematical Institute.

FundersFunder number
Euler International Mathematical Institute075-15-2022-289

    Keywords

    • 52B70
    • bifurcation
    • Morse theory
    • polyhedra

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