On the Weight of Minor Faces in Triangle-Free 3-Polytopes

Abstract

The weight w(f) of a face f in a 3-polytope is the degree-sum of vertices incident with f. It follows from Lebesgue’s results of 1940 that every triangle-free 3-polytope without 4-faces incident with at least three 3-vertices has a 4-face with w ≤ 21 or a 5-face with w ≤ 17. Here, the bound 17 is sharp, but it was still unknown whether 21 is sharp.

Keywords

• plane map
• plane graph
• 3-polytope
• structural property
• weight of face