Reconstructing simplicial polytopes from their graphs and affine 2-stresses

Abstract

A conjecture of Kalai from 1994 posits that for an arbitrary 2 ≤ k ≤ ⌊d/2⌋, the combinatorial type of a simplicial d-polytope P is uniquely determined by the (k − 1)-skeleton of P (given as an abstract simplicial complex) together with the space of affine k-stresses on P. We establish the first non-trivial case of this conjecture, namely, the case of k = 2. We also prove that for a general k, Kalai’s conjecture holds for the class of k-neighborly polytopes.