English

Quasigeodesics on the Cube

Metric Geometry 2025-03-18 v2

Abstract

A quasigeodesic is a curve on the surface of a convex polyhedron that has π\le \pi surface to each side at every point. In contrast, a geodesic has exactly π\pi to each side and so can never pass through a vertex, whereas quasigeodesics can. Although it is known that every convex polyhedron has at least three simple closed quasigeodesics, little else is known. Only tetrahedra have been thoroughly studied. In this paper we explore the quasigeodesics on a cube, which have not been previously enumerated. We prove that the cube has exactly 1515 simple closed quasigeodesics (beyond the three known simple closed geodesics). For the lower bound we detail 1515 simple closed quasigeodesics. Our main contribution is establishing a matching upper bound. For general convex polyhedra, there is no known upper bound.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.10376,
  title  = {Quasigeodesics on the Cube},
  author = {MIT CompGeom Group and Hugo A. Akitaya and Erik D. Demaine and Adam Hesterberg and Thomas C. Hull and Anna Lubiw and Jayson Lynch and Klara Mundilova and Chie Nara and Joseph O'Rourke and Frederick Stock and Josef Tkadlec and Ryuhei Uehara},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.10376},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

15 pages, 11 figures, 13 references

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:19:04.306Z