On the faces of unigraphic $3$-polytopes

Abstract

A $3$-polytope is a $3$-connected, planar graph. It is called unigraphic if it does not share its vertex degree sequence with any other $3$-polytope, up to graph isomorphism. The classification of unigraphic $3$-polytopes appears to be a difficult problem. In this paper we prove that, apart from pyramids, all unigraphic $3$-polytopes have no $n$-gonal faces for $n\geq 10$. Our method involves defining several planar graph transformations on a given $3$-polytope containing an $n$-gonal face with $n\geq 10$. The delicate part is to prove that, for every such $3$-polytope, at least one of these transformations both preserves $3$-connectivity, and is not an isomorphism.