Affine stress reconstruction conjecture for spheres without large missing faces

Assume ud/2u\leq d/2. Let (Δ,p)(\Delta,p) be a (d1)(d-1)-sphere in S(du,d1)S(d-u,d-1), with pp a generic or natural embedding in Rd\mathbb{R}^d. Let Sia(Δ,p)\mathcal{S}^a_i(\Delta,p) denote the space of affine ii-stresses and let RijR_{i-j} denote the corresponding space of differential operators. Affine stress reconstruction conjecture. For all 1j<iu1\leq j<i\leq u,

Sja(Δ,p)={μω:ωSia(Δ,p), μRij}.\mathcal{S}^a_j(\Delta,p)=\{\partial_\mu\omega:\omega\in\mathcal{S}^a_i(\Delta,p),\ \mu\in R_{i-j}\}.

The conjecture was proposed as a structural description of affine stress spaces, but the paper gives counterexamples showing that it fails when d=2u6d=2u\geq 6; it is therefore refuted.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Isabella Novik and Hailun Zheng, “Lower bounds on the g-numbers of spheres without large missing faces”, arXiv:2604.16905 (2026).

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