The smoothness of the real projective deformation spaces of orderable Coxeter 3-polytopes

Abstract

A Coxeter polytope is a convex polytope in a real projective space equipped with linear reflections in its facets, such that the orbits of the polytope under the action of the group generated by the linear reflections tessellate a convex subset in the real projective space. Vinberg proved that the group generated by these reflections acts properly discontinuously on the interior of this convex subset, thus inducing a natural orbifold structure on the polytope. In this paper, we consider labeled combinatorial polytopes $\mathcal{G}$ associated to such orbifolds, and study the deformation space $\mathcal{C} (\mathcal{G})$ of Coxeter polytopes realizing $\mathcal{G}$. We prove that if $\mathcal G$ is orderable and of normal type, and its underlying combinatorial polytope is not a cone over a polygon, then the deformation space $\mathcal C(\mathcal G)$ is a smooth manifold. This result is obtained by analyzing a natural map from $\mathcal C(\mathcal G)$ to a smooth manifold called the realization space.