Edge connectivity of simplicial polytopes

Abstract

We show that the graph of a simplicial polytope of dimension $d \ge 3$ has no nontrivial minimum edge cut with fewer than $d(d+1)/2$ edges, hence the graph is $\min\{\delta, d(d+1)/2\}$-edge-connected where $\delta$ denotes the minimum degree. When $d = 3$, this implies that every minimum edge cut in a plane triangulation is trivial. When $d \ge 4$, we construct a simplicial $d$-polytope whose graph has a nontrivial minimum edge cut of cardinality $d(d+1)/2$, proving that the aforementioned result is best possible.