Duoprism

Nomenclature

Four-dimensional duoprisms are considered to be prismatic 4-polytopes. A duoprism constructed from two regular polygons of the same edge length is a uniform duoprism.

A duoprism made of n-polygons and m-polygons is named by prefixing 'duoprism' with the names of the base polygons, for example: a triangular-pentagonal duoprism is the Cartesian product of a triangle and a pentagon.

An alternative, more concise way of specifying a particular duoprism is by prefixing with numbers denoting the base polygons, for example: 3,5-duoprism for the triangular-pentagonal duoprism.

Other alternative names:

The term duoprism is coined by George Olshevsky, shortened from double prism. John Horton Conway proposed a similar name proprism for product prism, a Cartesian product of two or more polytopes of dimension at least two. The duoprisms are proprisms formed from exactly two polytopes.

Geometry of 4-dimensional duoprisms

A 4-dimensional uniform duoprism is created by the product of a regular n-sided polygon and a regular m-sided polygon with the same edge length. It is bounded by n m-gonal prisms and m n-gonal prisms. For example, the Cartesian product of a triangle and a hexagon is a duoprism bounded by 6 triangular prisms and 3 hexagonal prisms.

The m-gonal prisms are attached to each other via their m-gonal faces, and form a closed loop. Similarly, the n-gonal prisms are attached to each other via their n-gonal faces, and form a second loop perpendicular to the first. These two loops are attached to each other via their square faces, and are mutually perpendicular.

As m and n approach infinity, the corresponding duoprisms approach the duocylinder. As such, duoprisms are useful as non-quadric approximations of the duocylinder.

Perspective projections

A cell-centered perspective projection makes a duoprism look like a torus, with two sets of orthogonal cells, p-gonal and q-gonal prisms.

The p-q duoprisms are identical to the q-p duoprisms, but look different in these projections because they are projected in the center of different cells.

Orthogonal projections

Vertex-centered orthogonal projections of p-p duoprisms project into [2n] symmetry for odd degrees, and [n] for even degrees. There are n vertices projected into the center. For 4,4, it represents the A³ Coxeter plane of the tesseract. The 5,5 projection is identical to the 3D rhombic triacontahedron.

Related polytopes

The regular skew polyhedron, {4,4|n}, exists in 4-space as the n² square faces of a n-n duoprism, using all 2n² edges and n² vertices. The 2n n-gonal faces can be seen as removed. (skew polyhedra can be seen in the same way by a n-m duoprism, but these are not regular.)

Duoantiprism

Like the antiprisms as alternated prisms, there is a set of 4-dimensional duoantiprisms: 4-polytopes that can be created by an alternation operation applied to a duoprism. The alternated vertices create nonregular tetrahedral cells, except for the special case, the 4-4 duoprism (tesseract) which creates the uniform (and regular) 16-cell. The 16-cell is the only convex uniform duoantiprism.

The duoprisms , t_0,1,2,3{p,2,q}, can be alternated into , ht_0,1,2,3{p,2,q}, the "duoantiprisms", which cannot be made uniform in general. The only convex uniform solution is the trivial case of p=q=2, which is a lower symmetry construction of the tesseract , t_0,1,2,3{2,2,2}, with its alternation as the 16-cell, , s{2}s{2}.

The only nonconvex uniform solution is p=5, q=5/3, ht_0,1,2,3{5,2,5/3}, , constructed from 10 pentagonal antiprisms, 10 pentagrammic crossed-antiprisms, and 50 tetrahedra, known as the great duoantiprism (gudap).

k_22 polytopes

The 3-3 duoprism, -1₂₂, is first in a dimensional series of uniform polytopes, expressed by Coxeter as k₂₂ series. The 3-3 duoprism is the vertex figure for the second, the birectified 5-simplex. The fourth figure is a Euclidean honeycomb, 2₂₂, and the final is a paracompact hyperbolic honeycomb, 3₂₂, with Coxeter group [3_2,2,3], T ¯ 7 . Each progressive uniform polytope is constructed from the previous as its vertex figure.