Fields Institute Communications Volume 00, 0000 Regular and chiral polytopes in low dimensions Peter McMullen University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT, England
[email protected] Egon Schulte Northeastern University Boston, MA 02115, USA
[email protected] Abstract. There are two main thrusts in the theory of regular and chi- ral polytopes: the abstract, purely combinatorial aspect, and the geo- metric one of realizations. This brief survey concentrates on the latter. The dimension of a faithful realization of a finite abstract regular poly- tope in some euclidean space is no smaller than its rank, while that of a chiral polytope must strictly exceed the rank. There are similar restric- tions on the dimensions of realizations of regular and chiral apeirotopes. From the viewpoint of realizations in a fixed dimension, the problems are now completely solved in up to three dimensions, while considerable progress has been made on the classification in four dimensions, the fi- nite regular case again having been solved. This article reports on what has been done already, and what might be expected in the near future. 1 Introduction Donald Coxeter’s work on regular polytopes and groups of reflexions is often viewed as his most important contribution. At its heart lies a dialogue between geometry and algebra which was so characteristic for his mathematics (see, for example, [4, 5, 7]). This paper is yet more evidence for his lasting influence on arXiv:math/0503389v1 [math.MG] 18 Mar 2005 generations of geometers. In [16] (see also [17, Sections 7E, 7F]), we classified completely all the faith- fully realized regular polytopes and discrete regular apeirotopes in dimensions up to three.