Reconstructing Nearly Simple Polytopes from their Graph

Abstract

We present a partial description of which polytopes are reconstructible from their graphs. This is an extension of work by Blind and Mani (1987) and Kalai (1988), which showed that simple polytopes can be reconstructed from their graphs. In particular, we introduce a notion of $h$-nearly simple and prove that 1-nearly simple and 2-nearly simple polytopes are reconstructible from their graphs. We also give an example of a 3-nearly simple polytope which is not reconstructible from its graph. Furthermore, we give a partial list of polytopes which are reconstructible from their graphs in an entirely non-constructive way.