English

Flat simplices and kissing polytopes

Metric Geometry 2026-01-07 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

We consider how flat a lattice simplex contained in the hypercube [0,k]d[0,k]^d can be. This question is related to the notion of kissing polytopes: two lattice polytopes contained in the hypercube [0,k]d[0,k]^d are kissing when they are disjoint but their distance is as small as possible. We show that the smallest possible distance of a lattice point PP contained in the cube [0,k]3[0,k]^3 to a lattice triangle in the same cube that does not contain PP is 13k44k3+4k22k+1 \frac{1}{\sqrt{3k^4-4k^3+4k^2-2k+1}} when kk is at least 22. We also improve the known lower bounds on the distance of kissing polytopes for dd at least 44 and kk at least 22.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.03183,
  title  = {Flat simplices and kissing polytopes},
  author = {Antoine Deza and Lionel Pournin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.03183},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

26 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:52:55.066Z