The Octagonal PET I: Renormalization and Hyperbolic Symmetry

Abstract

We introduce a family of polytope exchange transformations (PETs) acting on parallelotopes in $\R^{2n}$ for $n=1,2,3...$. These PETs are constructed using a pair of lattices in $\R^{2n}$. The moduli space of these PETs is $GL_n(\R)$. We study the case n=1 in detail. In this case, we show that the 2-dimensional family is completely renormalizable and that the $(2,4,\infty)$ hyperbolic reflection triangle group acts (by linear fractional transformations) as the renormalization group on the moduli space. These results have a number of geometric corollaries for the system. Most of the paper is traditional mathematics, but some part of the paper relies on a rigorous computer-assisted proof involving integer calculations.