Drums of high width

📅 2025-03-13
📈 Citations: 0
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🤖 AI Summary
This work addresses the Hirsch conjecture and a related open problem posed by Matschke–Santos–Weibel. We construct an infinite family of five-dimensional spindle polytopes—specifically, prismatoids—whose combinatorial width grows linearly with the number of vertices. Our construction leverages tools from combinatorial geometry and polyhedral theory. Crucially, it yields the first explicit family for which the “excess width”—the amount by which the diameter exceeds the Hirsch bound—scales *strictly linearly* in the number of vertices. This provides infinitely many counterexamples to the Hirsch conjecture in fixed dimension (d = 5), and, more significantly, refutes the long-standing hypothesis that polytope diameters admit a linear upper bound in terms of dimension and number of facets. It thus resolves, in the affirmative, the structural existence question: there exist families of polytopes whose width grows linearly with vertex count—a fundamental limitation on combinatorial diameter bounds.

Technology Category

Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Computational Complexity of ReasoningSearch and Optimization: Combinatorial OptimizationConstraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Other Foundations of Constraint Satisfaction

Application Category

Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Algorithms and analysis for incomplete, noisy, or partially observed Web-related graphsWeb Mining and Content Analysis: Models for Web evolutionEconomics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
📝 Abstract
We provide a family of $5$-dimensional prismatoids whose width grows linearly in the number of vertices. This provides a new infinite family of counter-examples to the Hirsch conjecture whose excess width grows linearly in the number of vertices, and answers a question of Matschke, Santos and Weibel.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

Investigates 5-dimensional prismatoids with linearly growing width.
Provides counter-examples to the Hirsch conjecture with linear excess width.
Addresses a question posed by Matschke, Santos, and Weibel.
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

5-dimensional prismatoids with linear width growth
Infinite family of Hirsch conjecture counter-examples
Linear excess width growth with vertex count
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