Compression Maps Between Polytopes
Abstract
A shape of a combinatorial polytope is a convex embedding into Euclidean space. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a piecewise linear map between two shapes of the same polytope to be a compression (respectively a weak compression), meaning a distance decreasing (respectively a distance non-increasing) map between distinct pairs of points. We establish that there is a partial order on the space of shapes given by the relation of having a weak compression map between pairs of shapes. Finally, we construct a compression metric on the projective shape space of a polytope; the space of convex Euclidean realizations modulo rigid motions and homothety. For the projective space shape of a simplex, we show that the compression metric is complete. For general polytopes, we establish that the projective shape space has a natural completion given by the projective shape space of weakly convex realizations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.18534,
title = {Compression Maps Between Polytopes},
author = {José Ayala and David Kirszenblat and J. Hyam Rubinstein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.18534},
year = {2025}
}