geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

, a toroidal polyhedron is a

polyhedron In geometry, a polyhedron (plural polyhedra or polyhedrons; ) is a three-dimensional shape with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices. A convex polyhedron is the convex hull of finitely many points, not all on th ...

which is also a

toroid In mathematics, a toroid is a surface of revolution with a hole in the middle. The axis of revolution passes through the hole and so does not intersect the surface. For example, when a rectangle is rotated around an axis parallel to one of its ...

(a -holed

torus In geometry, a torus (plural tori, colloquially donut or doughnut) is a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three-dimensional space about an axis that is coplanar with the circle. If the axis of revolution does not tou ...

), having a

topological In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

() of 1 or greater. Notable examples include the

Császár Császár is a village in Komárom-Esztergom county, Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to ...

and Szilassi polyhedra.

Variations in definition

Toroidal polyhedra are defined as collections of

polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure that is described by a finite number of straight line segments connected to form a closed ''polygonal chain'' (or ''polygonal circuit''). The bounded plane region, the bounding circuit, or the two toge ...

s that meet at their edges and vertices, forming a

manifold In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a n ...

as they do. That is, each edge should be shared by exactly two polygons, and at each vertex the edges and faces that meet at the vertex should be linked together in a single cycle of alternating edges and faces, the link of the vertex. For toroidal polyhedra, this manifold is an orientable surface. Some authors restrict the phrase "toroidal polyhedra" to mean more specifically polyhedra topologically equivalent to the (genus 1)

. In this area, it is important to distinguish embedded toroidal polyhedra, whose faces are flat polygons in three-dimensional

Euclidean space Euclidean space is the fundamental space of geometry, intended to represent physical space. Originally, that is, in Euclid's Elements, Euclid's ''Elements'', it was the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, but in modern mathematics ther ...

that do not cross themselves or each other, from abstract polyhedra, topological surfaces without any specified geometric realization. Intermediate between these two extremes are polyhedra formed by geometric polygons or star polygons in Euclidean space that are allowed to cross each other. In all of these cases the toroidal nature of a polyhedron can be verified by its orientability and by its

Euler characteristic In mathematics, and more specifically in algebraic topology and polyhedral combinatorics, the Euler characteristic (or Euler number, or Euler–Poincaré characteristic) is a topological invariant, a number that describes a topological space ...

being non-positive. The Euler characteristic generalizes to ''V'' − ''E'' + ''F'' = 2 − 2''N'', where ''N'' is the number of holes.

Császár and Szilassi polyhedra

Two of the simplest possible embedded toroidal polyhedra are the Császár and Szilassi polyhedra. The

Császár polyhedron In geometry, the Császár polyhedron () is a nonconvex toroidal polyhedron with 14 triangular faces. This polyhedron has no diagonals; every pair of vertices is connected by an edge. The seven vertices and 21 edges of the Császár polyhedron ...

is a seven-vertex toroidal polyhedron with 21 edges and 14 triangular faces. It and the

tetrahedron In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the o ...

are the only known polyhedra in which every possible line segment connecting two vertices forms an edge of the polyhedron. Its dual, the Szilassi polyhedron, has seven hexagonal faces that are all adjacent to each other, hence providing the existence half of the

theorem In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proved, or can be proved. The ''proof'' of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to establish that the theorem is a logical consequence of th ...

that the maximum number of colors needed for a map on a (genus one) torus is seven. The Császár polyhedron has the fewest possible vertices of any embedded toroidal polyhedron, and the Szilassi polyhedron has the fewest possible faces of any embedded toroidal polyhedron.

Stewart toroids

A special category of toroidal polyhedra are constructed exclusively by

regular polygon In Euclidean geometry, a regular polygon is a polygon that is Equiangular polygon, direct equiangular (all angles are equal in measure) and Equilateral polygon, equilateral (all sides have the same length). Regular polygons may be either convex p ...

faces, without crossings, and with a further restriction that adjacent faces may not lie in the same plane as each other. These are called Stewart toroids, named after

Bonnie Stewart Bonnie Madison Stewart (July 10, 1914 – April 15, 1994) was a professor of mathematics at Michigan State University from 1940 to 1980. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1941, under the supervision of Cyrus Colton M ...

, who studied them intensively. They are analogous to the Johnson solids in the case of

convex polyhedra A convex polytope is a special case of a polytope, having the additional property that it is also a convex set contained in the n-dimensional Euclidean space \mathbb^n. Most texts. use the term "polytope" for a bounded convex polytope, and the wo ...

; however, unlike the Johnson solids, there are infinitely many Stewart toroids. They include also toroidal

deltahedra In geometry, a deltahedron (plural ''deltahedra'') is a polyhedron whose faces are all equilateral triangles. The name is taken from the Greek upper case delta (Δ), which has the shape of an equilateral triangle. There are infinitely many del ...

, polyhedra whose faces are all equilateral triangles. A restricted class of Stewart toroids, also defined by Stewart, are the ''quasi-convex toroidal polyhedra''. These are Stewart toroids that include all of the edges of their

convex hull In geometry, the convex hull or convex envelope or convex closure of a shape is the smallest convex set that contains it. The convex hull may be defined either as the intersection of all convex sets containing a given subset of a Euclidean space ...

s. For such a polyhedron, each face of the convex hull either lies on the surface of the toroid, or is a polygon all of whose edges lie on the surface of the toroid.

Self-crossing polyhedra

A polyhedron that is formed by a system of crossing polygons corresponds to an abstract topological manifold formed by its polygons and their system of shared edges and vertices, and the genus of the polyhedron may be determined from this abstract manifold. Examples include the genus-1

octahemioctahedron In geometry, the octahemioctahedron or allelotetratetrahedron is a nonconvex uniform polyhedron, indexed as . It has 12 faces (8 triangles and 4 hexagons), 24 edges and 12 vertices. Its vertex figure is a crossed quadrilateral. It is one of n ...

, the genus-3

small cubicuboctahedron In geometry, the small cubicuboctahedron is a uniform star polyhedron, indexed as U13. It has 20 faces (8 triangles, 6 squares, and 6 octagons), 48 edges, and 24 vertices. Its vertex figure is a crossed quadrilateral. The small cubicuboctahedro ...

, and the genus-4

great dodecahedron In geometry, the great dodecahedron is a Kepler–Poinsot polyhedron, with Schläfli symbol and Coxeter–Dynkin diagram of . It is one of four nonconvex regular polyhedra. It is composed of 12 pentagonal faces (six pairs of parallel pentagon ...

Crown polyhedra

A crown polyhedron or stephanoid is a toroidal polyhedron which is also

noble A noble is a member of the nobility. Noble may also refer to: Places Antarctica * Noble Glacier, King George Island * Noble Nunatak, Marie Byrd Land * Noble Peak, Wiencke Island * Noble Rocks, Graham Land Australia * Noble Island, Gr ...

, being both isogonal (equal vertices) and

isohedral In geometry, a tessellation of dimension (a plane tiling) or higher, or a polytope of dimension (a polyhedron) or higher, is isohedral or face-transitive if all its faces are the same. More specifically, all faces must be not merely congruent ...

(equal faces). Crown polyhedra are self-intersecting and topologically

self-dual In mathematics, a duality translates concepts, theorems or mathematical structures into other concepts, theorems or structures, in a Injective function, one-to-one fashion, often (but not always) by means of an Involution (mathematics), involutio ...

.. See in particula
p. 60

References

External links

*{{MathWorld, urlname=ToroidalPolyhedron, title=Toroidal polyhedron
Stewart Toroids (Toroidal Solids with Regular Polygon Faces)Stewart toroids