English

Intersecting the sides of a polygon

Metric Geometry 2021-06-16 v2 Differential Geometry Dynamical Systems Exactly Solvable and Integrable Systems

Abstract

Consider the map SS which sends a planar polygon PP to a new polygon S(P)S(P) whose vertices are the intersection points of second nearest sides of PP. This map is the inverse of the famous pentagram map. In this paper we investigate the dynamics of the map SS. Namely, we address the question of whether a convex polygon stays convex under iterations of SS. Computer experiments suggest that this almost never happens. We prove that indeed the set of polygons which remain convex under iterations of SS has measure zero, and moreover it is an algebraic subvariety of codimension two. We also discuss the equations cutting out this subvariety, as well as their geometric meaning in the case of pentagons.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.02400,
  title  = {Intersecting the sides of a polygon},
  author = {Anton Izosimov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.02400},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

9 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T20:43:31.327Z