Restricted Hyperplane Sections of the Cross-Polytope and the Simplex

Abstract

We give a new proof of Webb's theorem on maximal central hyperplane sections of the regular \(n\)-simplex \(Δ_n\), viewed in its standard embedding in \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\). A similar method also yields sharp maximal estimates for non-central sections of \(Δ^n\) whose distance \(d\) from the barycenter is small, namely $d<\sqrt{\frac{1}{(n+1)(2n+1)}}.$ Moreover, we obtain sharp volume estimates for central hyperplane sections of the cross-polytope \(B_1^n\) that pass through the barycenter of a facet.