English

Magical Property of Fullerenes

Combinatorics 2025-11-25 v2

Abstract

Fullerenes are an allotrope of carbon having hollow, cage-like structure. Atoms in the molecule are arranged in pentagonal and hexagonal rings, such that each atom is connected to three other atoms. Simple polyhedra having only pentagonal and hexagonal faces are a mathematical model for fullerenes. We say that a fullerene with nn vertices has magical property if the numbers 1,2,,n1, 2, \dots, n may be assigned to its vertices so that the sums of the numbers in each pentagonal faces are equal and the sums of the numbers in each hexagonal faces are equal. We show that C8n+4C_{8n+4} does not admit such an arrangement for all nn, while there are fullerenes, like C24C_{24} and C26C_{26} that have many nonisomorphic such arrangements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.07365,
  title  = {Magical Property of Fullerenes},
  author = {Djordje Baralic and Adam Farhat},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.07365},
  year   = {2025}
}