Meanings
plural cross-polytopes · alternative cross polytope
- geometryA polytope that is the convex hull of points, two on each Cartesian axis of a Euclidean space, that are equidistant from the origin; an orthoplex.
The case p = 1, which is actually important to us, is illustrated in Figure 1.14; we are looking at the intersection of a cross-polytope with the probability simplex.
2006, Ingemar Bengtsson, Karol Zyczkowski, Geometry of Quantum States: An Introduction to Quantum Entanglement, page 254 more examples
2008, Robert Erdahl, Andrei Ordine, Konstantin Rybnikov, Perfect Delaunay Polytopes and Perfect Quadratic Functions on Lattices, Matthias Beck, et al. (editors), Contemporary Mathematics 452: Integer Points in Polyhedra — Geometry, Number Theory, Representation Theory, Algebra, Optimization, Statistics, AMS-IMS-SIAM Joint Summer Conference, June 11-15, 2006, page 104, The convex hulls of such crosses often appear as cells in Delaunay tilings – cross polytopes are examples, as are the more spectacular symmetric perfect Delaunay polytopes.
The cross polytope βₙ is the regular polytope in n dimensions corresponding to the convex hull of the points formed by permuting the coordinates (±1,0,0,...,0), and has therefore 2n vertices. It is named so because its vertices are located equidistant from the origin, along the Cartesian axes in n-space. The cross polytope in n dimensions is bounded by 2ⁿ (n - 1)-simplices, has 2n vertices and 2ⁿ(n - 1) edges.
2009, Herbert W. Hamber, Quantum Gravitation: The Feynman Path Integral Approach, Springer, page 263If one works with the l₁ norm, a ball (the set of all points whose distance lies within a certain radius around a point of interest) has the shape of a cross-polytope. A one-dimensional cross-polytope is a line segment, a two-dimensional cross-polytope is a square, for three dimensions, an octahedron, and so forth.
2010, Rainer Typke, Agatha Walczak-Typke, “Indexing Techniques for Non-metric Music Dissimilarity Measures”, in Zbigniew W. Raś, Alicja A. Wieczorkowska, editors, Advances in Music Information Retrieval, Springer, page 10While centrally symmetric d-polytopes with 2d vertices are affinely equivalent to the d-dimensional cross-polytope, a complete classification of the centrally symmetric d-polytopes with 2d + 2 vertices is out of reach.
2003, Branko Grünbaum, Convex Polytopes, 2nd edition, Springer, page 121bSynonyms: cocube, hyperoctahedron, orthoplex
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA polytope that is the convex hull of points, two on each Cartesian axis of a Euclidean space, that are equidistant from the origin; an orthoplex.
Cite this entry
cross-polytope. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cross-polytope
“cross-polytope.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cross-polytope. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cross-polytope,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cross-polytope.
Source: cross-polytope on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.