Have the graphs representable by touching tetrahedra been explored? Let $\cal T$ be a collection of tetrahedra in $\mathbb{R}^3$ with pairwise disjoint interiors. Define a graph $G_{\cal T}$ to have a node for each tetrahedron in $\cal T$, and an arc between $T_1$ and $T_2$ if those two tetrahedra share one or more boundary points: $T_1 \cap T_2 \neq \varnothing$. > Which graphs $G$ are equal to $G_{\cal T}$ for some $\cal T$? For example, $K_6$ is a touching-tetrahedra graph: <br /> <img src="http://cs.smith.edu/~orourke/MathOverflow/TouchingTetrahedra.jpg" alt="TouchingTetrahedra" /> <br /> In contrast, responses to an earlier MO question, "<a href="http://mathoverflow.net/questions/85547/">Extensions of the Koebe–Andreev–Thurston theorem to sphere packing?</a>" showed that $K_6$ is not a ball-touching graph. I know triangle-touching graphs in $\mathbb{R}^2$ have been studied, often called *triangle contact representations*, e.g., the recent paper by Gonçalves, Lévêque, and Pinlou, "<a href="http://hal-lirmm.ccsd.cnrs.fr/lirmm-00620728/fr">Triangle Contact Representations and Duality</a>." But I haven't found literature on the generalization to tetrahedra. I would be interested in any pointers to the literature, or classes of graphs that either are or are not touching-tetrahedra graphs. E.g., is $K_7$ a touching-tetrahedra graph? Thanks!