Convex-Faced Combinatorially Regular Polyhedra of Small Genus

Combinatorially regular polyhedra are polyhedral realizations (embeddings) in Euclidean 3-space E of regular maps on (orientable) closed compact surfaces. They are close analogues of the Platonic solids. A surface of genus g > 2 admits only finitely many regular maps, and generally only a small number of them can be realized as polyhedra with convex faces. When the genus g is small, meaning that g is in the historically motivated range 2 6 g 6 6, only eight regular maps of genus g are known to have polyhedral realizations, two discovered quite recently. These include spectacular convex-faced polyhedra realizing famous maps of Klein, Fricke, Dyck, and Coxeter. We provide supporting evidence that this list is complete; in other words, we strongly conjecture that in addition to those eight there are no other regular maps of genus g, with 2 6 g 6 6, admitting realizations as convex-faced polyhedra in E. For all admissible maps in this range, save Gordan’s map of genus 4, and its dual, we rule out realizability by a polyhedron in E.