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6-cube
Hexeract

Orthogonal projection
inside Petrie polygon
Orange vertices are doubled, and the center yellow has 4 vertices
Type Regular 6-polytope
Family hypercube
Schläfli symbol {4,34}
Coxeter diagram
5-faces 12 {4,3,3,3}
4-faces 60 {4,3,3}
Cells 160 {4,3}
Faces 240 {4}
Edges 192
Vertices 64
Vertex figure 5-simplex
Petrie polygon dodecagon
Coxeter group B6, [34,4]
Dual 6-orthoplex
Properties convex, Hanner polytope

In geometry, a 6-cube is a six-dimensional hypercube with 64 vertices, 192 edges, 240 square faces, 160 cubic cells, 60 tesseract 4-faces, and 12 5-cube 5-faces.

It has Schläfli symbol {4,34}, being composed of 3 5-cubes around each 4-face. It can be called a hexeract, a portmanteau of tesseract (the 4-cube) with hex for six (dimensions) in Greek. It can also be called a regular dodeca-6-tope or dodecapeton, being a 6-dimensional polytope constructed from 12 regular facets.

It is a part of an infinite family of polytopes, called hypercubes. The dual of a 6-cube can be called a 6-orthoplex, and is a part of the infinite family of cross-polytopes. It is composed of various 5-cubes, at perpendicular angles on the u-axis, forming coordinates (x,y,z,w,v,u).[1][2]

Applying an alternation operation, deleting alternating vertices of the 6-cube, creates another uniform polytope, called a 6-demicube, (part of an infinite family called demihypercubes), which has 12 5-demicube and 32 5-simplex facets.

As a configuration

This configuration matrix represents the 6-cube. The rows and columns correspond to vertices, edges, faces, cells, 4-faces and 5-faces. The diagonal numbers say how many of each element occur in the whole 6-cube. The nondiagonal numbers say how many of the column's element occur in or at the row's element.[3][4]

Cartesian coordinates

Cartesian coordinates for the vertices of a 6-cube centered at the origin and edge length 2 are

(±1,±1,±1,±1,±1,±1)

while the interior of the same consists of all points (x0, x1, x2, x3, x4, x5) with −1 < xi < 1.

Construction

There are three Coxeter groups associated with the 6-cube, one regular, with the C6 or [4,3,3,3,3] Coxeter group, and a half symmetry (D6) or [33,1,1] Coxeter group. The lowest symmetry construction is based on hyperrectangles or proprisms, cartesian products of lower dimensional hypercubes.

Name Coxeter Schläfli Symmetry Order
Regular 6-cube
{4,3,3,3,3} [4,3,3,3,3] 46080
Quasiregular 6-cube [3,3,3,31,1] 23040
hyperrectangle {4,3,3,3}×{} [4,3,3,3,2] 7680
{4,3,3}×{4} [4,3,3,2,4] 3072
{4,3}2 [4,3,2,4,3] 2304
{4,3,3}×{}2 [4,3,3,2,2] 1536
{4,3}×{4}×{} [4,3,2,4,2] 768
{4}3 [4,2,4,2,4] 512
{4,3}×{}3 [4,3,2,2,2] 384
{4}2×{}2 [4,2,4,2,2] 256
{4}×{}4 [4,2,2,2,2] 128
{}6 [2,2,2,2,2] 64

Projections

orthographic projections
Coxeter plane B6 B5 B4
Graph
Dihedral symmetry [12] [10] [8]
Coxeter plane Other B3 B2
Graph
Dihedral symmetry [2] [6] [4]
Coxeter plane A5 A3
Graph
Dihedral symmetry [6] [4]
3D Projections

6-cube 6D simple rotation through 2Pi with 6D perspective projection to 3D.

6-cube quasicrystal structure orthographically projected
to 3D using the golden ratio.

A 3D perspective projection of a hexeract undergoing a triple rotation about the X-W1, Y-W2 and Z-W3 orthogonal planes.

The 64 vertices of a 6-cube also represent a regular skew 4-polytope {4,3,4 | 4}. Its net can be seen as a 4×4×4 matrix of 64 cubes, a periodic subset of the cubic honeycomb, {4,3,4}, in 3-dimensions. It has 192 edges, and 192 square faces. Opposite faces fold together into a 4-cycle. Each fold direction adds 1 dimension, raising it into 6-space.

The 6-cube is 6th in a series of hypercube:

Petrie polygon orthographic projections
Line segment Square Cube 4-cube 5-cube 6-cube 7-cube 8-cube 9-cube 10-cube


This polytope is one of 63 uniform 6-polytopes generated from the B6 Coxeter plane, including the regular 6-cube or 6-orthoplex.

B6 polytopes

β6

t1β6

t2β6

t2γ6

t1γ6

γ6

t0,1β6

t0,2β6

t1,2β6

t0,3β6

t1,3β6

t2,3γ6

t0,4β6

t1,4γ6

t1,3γ6

t1,2γ6

t0,5γ6

t0,4γ6

t0,3γ6

t0,2γ6

t0,1γ6

t0,1,2β6

t0,1,3β6

t0,2,3β6

t1,2,3β6

t0,1,4β6

t0,2,4β6

t1,2,4β6

t0,3,4β6

t1,2,4γ6

t1,2,3γ6

t0,1,5β6

t0,2,5β6

t0,3,4γ6

t0,2,5γ6

t0,2,4γ6

t0,2,3γ6

t0,1,5γ6

t0,1,4γ6

t0,1,3γ6

t0,1,2γ6

t0,1,2,3β6

t0,1,2,4β6

t0,1,3,4β6

t0,2,3,4β6

t1,2,3,4γ6

t0,1,2,5β6

t0,1,3,5β6

t0,2,3,5γ6

t0,2,3,4γ6

t0,1,4,5γ6

t0,1,3,5γ6

t0,1,3,4γ6

t0,1,2,5γ6

t0,1,2,4γ6

t0,1,2,3γ6

t0,1,2,3,4β6

t0,1,2,3,5β6

t0,1,2,4,5β6

t0,1,2,4,5γ6

t0,1,2,3,5γ6

t0,1,2,3,4γ6

t0,1,2,3,4,5γ6

References

Family An Bn I2(p) / Dn E6 / E7 / E8 / F4 / G2 Hn
Regular polygon Triangle Square p-gon Hexagon Pentagon
Uniform polyhedron Tetrahedron OctahedronCube Demicube DodecahedronIcosahedron
Uniform polychoron Pentachoron 16-cellTesseract Demitesseract 24-cell 120-cell600-cell
Uniform 5-polytope 5-simplex 5-orthoplex5-cube 5-demicube
Uniform 6-polytope 6-simplex 6-orthoplex6-cube 6-demicube 122221
Uniform 7-polytope 7-simplex 7-orthoplex7-cube 7-demicube 132231321
Uniform 8-polytope 8-simplex 8-orthoplex8-cube 8-demicube 142241421
Uniform 9-polytope 9-simplex 9-orthoplex9-cube 9-demicube
Uniform 10-polytope 10-simplex 10-orthoplex10-cube 10-demicube
Uniform n-polytope n-simplex n-orthoplexn-cube n-demicube 1k22k1k21 n-pentagonal polytope
Topics: Polytope familiesRegular polytopeList of regular polytopes and compounds