16-cell honeycomb

In four-dimensional Euclidean geometry, the 16-cell honeycomb is one of the three regular space-filling tessellations (or honeycombs), represented by Schläfli symbol {3,3,4,3}, and constructed by a 4-dimensional packing of 16-cell facets, three around every face.

Its dual is the 24-cell honeycomb. Its vertex figure is a 24-cell. The vertex arrangement is called the B₄, D₄, or F₄ lattice.

• Hexadecachoric tetracomb/honeycomb
• Demitesseractic tetracomb/honeycomb

Vertices can be placed at all integer coordinates (i,j,k,l), such that the sum of the coordinates is even.

The vertex arrangement of the 16-cell honeycomb is called the D₄ lattice or F₄ lattice. The vertices of this lattice are the centers of the 3-spheres in the densest known packing of equal spheres in 4-space; its kissing number is 24, which is also the same as the kissing number in R⁴, as proved by Oleg Musin in 2003.

The related D⁺
₄ lattice (also called D²
₄) can be constructed by the union of two D₄ lattices, and is identical to the C₄ lattice:

∪ = =

The kissing number for D⁺
₄ is 2³ = 8, (2^{n − 1} for n < 8, 240 for n = 8, and 2n(n − 1) for n > 8).

The related D^*
₄ lattice (also called D⁴
₄ and C²
₄) can be constructed by the union of all four D₄ lattices, but it is identical to the D₄ lattice: It is also the 4-dimensional body centered cubic, the union of two 4-cube honeycombs in dual positions.

∪ ∪ ∪ = = ∪ .

The kissing number of the D^*
₄ lattice (and D₄ lattice) is 24 and its Voronoi tessellation is a 24-cell honeycomb, , containing all rectified 16-cells (24-cell) Voronoi cells, or .

There are three different symmetry constructions of this tessellation. Each symmetry can be represented by different arrangements of colored 16-cell facets.

It is related to the regular hyperbolic 5-space 5-orthoplex honeycomb, {3,3,3,4,3}, with 5-orthoplex facets, the regular 4-polytope 24-cell, {3,4,3} with octahedral (3-orthoplex) cell, and cube {4,3}, with (2-orthoplex) square faces.

It has a 2-dimensional analogue, {3,6}, and as an alternated form (the demitesseractic honeycomb, h{4,3,3,4}) it is related to the alternated cubic honeycomb.

This honeycomb is one of 20 uniform honeycombs constructed by the ${\displaystyle {\tilde {D}}_{5}}$Coxeter group, all but 3 repeated in other families by extended symmetry, seen in the graph symmetry of rings in the Coxeter–Dynkin diagrams. The 20 permutations are listed with its highest extended symmetry relation:

Regular and uniform honeycombs in 4-space:

• Tesseractic honeycomb
• 24-cell honeycomb
• Truncated 24-cell honeycomb
• Snub 24-cell honeycomb
• 5-cell honeycomb
• Truncated 5-cell honeycomb
• Omnitruncated 5-cell honeycomb

• Coxeter, H.S.M. Regular Polytopes, (3rd edition, 1973), Dover edition,ISBN 0-486-61480-8
  • pp. 154–156: Partial truncation or alternation, represented by h prefix: h{4,4} = {4,4}; h{4,3,4} = {3^1,1,4}, h{4,3,3,4} = {3,3,4,3}, ...
• Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H.S.M. Coxeter, edited by F. Arthur Sherk, Peter McMullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivic Weiss, Wiley-Interscience Publication, 1995,ISBN 978-0-471-01003-6 [1]
  • (Paper 24) H.S.M. Coxeter, Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes III, [Math. Zeit. 200 (1988) 3-45]
• George Olshevsky, Uniform Panoploid Tetracombs, Manuscript (2006) (Complete list of 11 convex uniform tilings, 28 convex uniform honeycombs, and 143 convex uniform tetracombs)
• Klitzing, Richard. "4D Euclidean tesselations". x3o3o4o3o - hext - O104
• Conway JH, Sloane NJH (1998). Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups (3rd ed.). Springer. ISBN 0-387-98585-9.