Highly symmetric unstable maniplexes

Abstract

A maniplex of rank n s an n-valent properly edge-coloured graph that generalises, simultaneously, maps on surfaces and abstract polytopes. The problem of stability in maniplexes is a natural variant of the problem of stability in graphs. A maniplex is stable if every automorphism of its canonical double cover is a lift of some automorphism of the original maniplex. Due to their very rich structure, regular (maximally symmetric) maniplexes are always stable. It is thus natural to ask what is the maximum possible degree of symmetry that a maniplex that is not stable can admit. Symmetry in maniplexes is usually measured by the number of orbits on flags (nodes) of their automorphism group. A few families of unstable maniplexes with 4 flag-orbits are known for rank 3. In this paper, we show that 2-orbit maniplexes exist for every rank n > 2$.