A Proof of the Molecular Conjecture

A $d$-dimensional body-and-hinge framework is a structure consisting of rigid bodies connected by hinges in $d$-dimensional space. The generic infinitesimal rigidity of a body-and-hinge framework has been characterized in terms of the underlying multigraph independently by Tay and Whiteley as follows: A multigraph $G$ can be realized as an infinitesimally rigid body-and-hinge framework by mapping each vertex to a body and each edge to a hinge if and only if ({d+1 \choose 2}-1)G$contains${d+1\choose 2}$ edge-disjoint spanning trees, where $(\left(\genfrac{}{}{0px}{}{d+1}{2}\right)-1)G$ is the graph obtained from $G$ by replacing each edge by $(\left(\genfrac{}{}{0px}{}{d+1}{2}\right)-1)$ parallel edges. In 1984 they jointly posed a question about whether their combinatorial characterization can be further applied to a nongeneric case. Specifically, they conjectured that $G$ can be realized as an infinitesimally rigid body-and-hinge framework if and only if $G$ can be realized as that with the additional hinge-coplanar'' property, i.e., all the hinges incident to each body are contained in a common hyperplane. This conjecture is called the Molecular Conjecture due to the equivalence between the infinitesimal rigidity of hinge-coplanar’’ body-and-hinge frameworks and that of bar-and-joint frameworks derived from molecules in 3-dimension. In 2-dimensional case this conjecture has been proved by Jackson and Jord{'a}n in 2006. In this paper we prove this long standing conjecture affirmatively for general dimension.