Polytope contractions within icosahedral symmetry

Icosahedral symmetry is ubiquitous in nature, and understanding possible deformations of structures exhibiting it can be critical in determining fundamental properties. In this work we present a framework for generating and representing deformations of such structures while the icosahedral symmetry is preserved. This is done by viewing the points of an orbit of the icosahedral group as vertices of an icosahedral polytope. Contraction of the orbit is defined as a continuous variation of the coordinates of the dominant point - which specifies the orbit in an appropriate basis - toward smaller positive values. Exact icosahedral symmetry is maintained at any stage of the contraction. All icosahedral orbits or polytopes can be built by successive contractions. This definition of contraction is general and can be applied to orbits of any finite reflection group.