Height functions on the $m \times n$ Miura-ori flip graph: degree sequence and diameter

Abstract

The state space of an origami crease pattern forms a flip graph, whose vertices are the flat-foldable mountain-valley assignments and whose edges join assignments differing by a single face flip. For the $m \times n$ Miura-ori, the degree sequence and diameter of this graph are known only for two rows. Each assignment maps to an integer height function on the grid, under which a vertex's degree equals its number of local extrema. In this model the vertices of each degree up to five are counted by an explicit polynomial in $m$ and $n$, valid once both exceed a bound that grows with the degree, and the height functions realizing those degrees are described explicitly. A closed-form lower bound for the diameter holds for all $m$ and $n$, and the matching upper bound reduces to an extremal inequality for $1$-Lipschitz functions on the grid, recovering the two-row distance at $m=2$. Since each invariant is read from the extrema or height differences of a grid function, the same reduction applies to any flip-graph quantity expressible in those terms.