Angles of orthocentric simplices

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Authors: Zakhar Kabluchko, Philipp Schange
Cited by: 0

Abstract

A $d$-dimensional simplex in Euclidean space is called orthocentric if all of its altitudes intersect at a single point, referred to as the orthocenter. We explicitly compute the internal and external angles at all faces of an orthocentric simplex. To this end, we introduce a parametric family of polyhedral cones, called orthocentric cones, and derive formulas for their angles and, more generally, for their conic intrinsic volumes. We characterize the tangent and normal cones of orthocentric simplices in terms of orthocentric cones with explicit parameters. Depending on whether the orthocenter lies inside the simplex, on its boundary, or outside, the simplex is classified as acute, rectangular, or obtuse, respectively. The solid angle formulas differ in these three cases. As a probabilistic application of the angle formulas, we explicitly compute the expected number of $k$-dimensional faces and the expected volume of the random polytope $[g_1/τ_1, \ldots, g_n/τ_n]$, where $g_1, \ldots, g_n$ are independent standard Gaussian vectors in $\mathbb{R}^d$, and $τ_1, \ldots, τ_n > 0$ are constants.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Point processes and geometric inequalities Computational Geometry and Mesh Generation Diffusion and Search Dynamics

Publication details

Journal / source
Transactions of the American Mathematical Society
Publication date
18 April 2026
Language
EN