In geometry, a bicentric polygon is a tangential
polygon (a polygon all of whose sides are tangent to an inner
incircle) which is also
cyclic — that is,
inscribed in an
outer circle that passes through each vertex of the polygon. All
triangles and all
regular polygons are bicentric. On the other hand, a
rectangle with unequal sides is not bicentric, because no circle can be tangent to all four sides.
Not all
quadrilaterals are bicentric (having both an incircle and a circumcircle). Given two circles (one within the other) with radii R and r where , there exists a convex quadrilateral inscribed in one of them and tangent to the other
if and only if their radii satisfy
where x is the distance between their centers.[2][3] This condition (and analogous conditions for higher order polygons) is known as
Fuss' theorem.[4]
Polygons with n > 4
A complicated general formula is known for any number n of sides for the relation among the circumradius R, the inradius r, and the distance x between the circumcenter and the incenter.[5] Some of these for specific n are:
where and
Regular polygons
Every
regular polygon is bicentric.[2] In a regular polygon, the incircle and the circumcircle are
concentric—that is, they share a common center, which is also the center of the regular polygon, so the distance between the incenter and circumcenter is always zero. The radius of the inscribed circle is the
apothem (the shortest distance from the center to the boundary of the regular polygon).
For any regular polygon, the relations between the common
edge length a, the radius r of the
incircle, and the radius R of the
circumcircle are:
If two circles are the inscribed and circumscribed circles of a particular bicentric n-gon, then the same two circles are the inscribed and circumscribed circles of infinitely many bicentric n-gons. More precisely,
every
tangent line to the inner of the two circles can be extended to a bicentric n-gon by placing vertices on the line at the points where it crosses the outer circle, continuing from each vertex along another tangent line, and continuing in the same way until the resulting
polygonal chain closes up to an n-gon. The fact that it will always do so is implied by
Poncelet's closure theorem, which more generally applies for inscribed and circumscribed
conics.[6]
Moreover, given a circumcircle and incircle, each diagonal of the variable polygon is tangent to a fixed circle. [7]