Delaunay polytopes derived from the Leech lattice
Abstract
Given a lattice L of Rn, a polytope D is called a Delaunay polytope in L if the set of its vertices is S L where S is a sphere having no lattice points in its interior. D is called perfect if the only ellipsoid in Rn that contains S L is exactly S. For a vector v of the Leech lattice 24 we define 24(v) to be the lattice of vectors of 24 orthogonal to v. We studied Delaunay polytopes of L=24(v) for |v|2<=22. We found some remarkable examples of Delaunay polytopes in such lattices and disproved a number of long standing conjectures. In particular, we discovered: --Perfect Delaunay polytopes of lattice width 4; previously, the largest known width was 2. --Perfect Delaunay polytopes in L, which can be extended to perfect Delaunay polytopes in superlattices of L of the same dimension. --Polytopes that are perfect Delaunay with respect to two lattices L⊂ L' of the same dimension. --Perfect Delaunay polytopes D for L with |Aut L|=6|Aut D|: all previously known examples had |Aut L|=|Aut D| or |Aut L|=2|Aut D|. --Antisymmetric perfect Delaunay polytopes in L, which cannot be extended to perfect (n+1)-dimensional centrally symmetric Delaunay polytopes. --Lattices, which have several orbits of non-isometric perfect Delaunay polytopes. Finally, we derived an upper bound for the covering radius of 24(v)*, which generalizes the Smith bound and we prove that it is met only by 23*, the best known lattice covering in R23.