A 6-polytope is a closed six-dimensional figure with vertices, edges, faces, cells (3-faces), 4-faces, and 5-faces. A vertex is a point where six or more edges meet. An edge is a line segment where four or more faces meet, and a face is a polygon where three or more cells meet. A cell is a polyhedron. A 4-face is a polychoron, and a 5-face is a 5-polytope. Furthermore, the following requirements must be met:
Each 4-face must join exactly two 5-faces (facets).
Adjacent facets are not in the same five-dimensional hyperplane.
The figure is not a compound of other figures which meet the requirements.
The value of the Euler characteristic used to characterise polyhedra does not generalize usefully to higher dimensions, and is zero for all 6-polytopes, whatever their underlying topology. This inadequacy of the Euler characteristic to reliably distinguish between different topologies in higher dimensions led to the discovery of the more sophisticated Betti numbers.[1]
Similarly, the notion of orientability of a polyhedron is insufficient to characterise the surface twistings of toroidal polytopes, and this led to the use of torsion coefficients.[1]
Classification
6-polytopes may be classified by properties like "convexity" and "symmetry".
A 6-polytope is convex if its boundary (including its 5-faces, 4-faces, cells, faces and edges) does not intersect itself and the line segment joining any two points of the 6-polytope is contained in the 6-polytope or its interior; otherwise, it is non-convex. Self-intersecting 6-polytope are also known as star 6-polytopes, from analogy with the star-like shapes of the non-convex Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra.
A regular 6-polytope has all identical regular 5-polytope facets. All regular 6-polytope are convex.
A uniform 6-polytope has a symmetry group under which all vertices are equivalent, and its facets are uniform 5-polytopes. The faces of a uniform polytope must be regular.
A prismatic 6-polytope is constructed by the Cartesian product of two lower-dimensional polytopes. A prismatic 6-polytope is uniform if its factors are uniform. The 6-cube is prismatic (product of a squares and a cube), but is considered separately because it has symmetries other than those inherited from its factors.
A 5-space tessellation is the division of five-dimensional Euclidean space into a regular grid of 5-polytope facets. Strictly speaking, tessellations are not 6-polytopes as they do not bound a "6D" volume, but we include them here for the sake of completeness because they are similar in many ways to 6-polytope. A uniform 5-space tessellation is one whose vertices are related by a space group and whose facets are uniform 5-polytopes.
Regular 6-polytopes
Regular 6-polytopes can be generated from Coxeter groups represented by the Schläfli symbol {p,q,r,s,t} with t {p,q,r,s} 5-polytope facets around each cell.
A. Boole Stott: Geometrical deduction of semiregular from regular polytopes and space fillings, Verhandelingen of the Koninklijke academy van Wetenschappen width unit Amsterdam, Eerste Sectie 11,1, Amsterdam, 1910
H.S.M. Coxeter, M.S. Longuet-Higgins und J.C.P. Miller: Uniform Polyhedra, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Londne, 1954
H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes, 3rd Edition, Dover New York, 1973
Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H.S.M. Coxeter, edited by F. Arthur Sherk, Peter McMullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivic Weiss, Wiley-Interscience Publication, 1995, ISBN978-0-471-01003-6[1]
(Paper 22) H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular and Semi Regular Polytopes I, [Math. Zeit. 46 (1940) 380-407, MR 2,10]
(Paper 23) H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes II, [Math. Zeit. 188 (1985) 559-591]
(Paper 24) H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes III, [Math. Zeit. 200 (1988) 3-45]
N.W. Johnson: The Theory of Uniform Polytopes and Honeycombs, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1966
