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Isohedra with nonconvex faces

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Abstract

An isohedron is a 3-dimensional polyhedron all faces of which are equivalent under symmetries of the polyhedron. Many well known polyhedra are isohedra; among them are the Platonic solids, the polars of Archimedean polyhedra, and a variety of polyhedra important in crystallography. Less well known are isohedra with nonconvex faces. We establish that such polyhedra must be starshaped and hence of genus 0, that their faces must be star-shaped pentagons with one concave vertex, and that they are combinatorially equivalent to either the pentagonal dodecahedron, or to the polar of the snub cube or snub dodecahedron.

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Supported in part by grants from the USA National Science Foundation.

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Grünbaum, B., Shephard, G.C. Isohedra with nonconvex faces. J Geom 63, 76–96 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01221240

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