We consider geometric and computational measures of complexity for sets of integer vectors, asking for a qualitative difference between $f$-vectors of simplicial and general $d$-polytopes, as well as flag $f$-vectors of $d$-polytopes and regular CW $(d-1)$-spheres, for $d\ge 4$.
This paper is a survey of recent advances as well as open problems in the study of face numbers of centrally symmetric simplicial polytopes and spheres. The topics discussed range from neighborliness of centrally symmetric polytopes and the upper bound theorem for centrally symmetric simplicial spheres to the generalized lower bound theorem for centrally symmetric simplicial polytopes and the lower bound conjecture for centrally symmetric simplicial spheres and manifolds.
We prove that the neighborly cubical polytopes studied by G"unter M. Ziegler and the first author arise as a special case of neighborly cubical spheres constructed by Babson, Billera, and Chan. By relating the two constructions we obtain an explicit description of a non-polytopal neighborly cubical sphere and, further, a new proof of the fact that the cubical equivelar surfaces of McMullen, Schulz, and Wills can be embedded into R^3.
It is known that the suspension of a simplicial complex can be realized with only one additional point. Suitable iterations of this construction generate highly symmetric simplicial complexes with various interesting combinatorial and topological properties. In particular, infinitely many non-PL spheres as well as contractible simplicial complexes with a vertex-transitive group of automorphisms can be obtained in this way.
In this paper we investigate the problem of finding the maximum volume polytopes, inscribed in the unit sphere of the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space, with a given number of vertices. We solve this problem for polytopes with $d+2$ vertices in every dimension, and for polytopes with $d+3$ vertices in odd dimensions. For polytopes with $d+3$ vertices in even dimensions we give a partial solution.
Factorization into spheres is achieved for skeleta of the simplex, cube, and cross-polytope, both explicitly and using Keevash's proof of existence of designs.
In 1988, Kalai extended a construction of Billera and Lee to produce many triangulated (d-1)-spheres. In fact, in view of upper bounds on the number of simplicial d-polytopes by Goodman and Pollack, he derived that for every dimension d>=5, most of these (d-1)-spheres are not polytopal. However, for d=4, this reasoning fails. We can now show that, as already conjectured by Kalai, all of his 3-spheres are in fact polytopal. Moreover, we can now give a shorter proof of Hebble & Lee's 2000 result that the dual graphs of these 4-polytopes are Hamiltonian. Therefore, the polars of these Kalai polyt…
We improve Larman's bound on the diameter of a polytope by showing that if $Δ$ is a normal simplicial complex, all of whose missing faces have size at most $r$, then the diameter of the facet-ridge graph of $Δ$ is not larger than $2^{r-2}n$, where $n$ is the number of vertices of $Δ$. We then use this result to provide new upper bounds on the diameters of the facet-ridge graphs of $k$-neighborly spheres, $r$-stacked spheres, and polytopes with small $g_r$. Specifically, our bounds imply that $r$-stacked spheres with $r=O(\log n)$ satisfy the polynomial Hirsch conjecture.
We describe an algorithm to enumerate polytopes. This algorithm is then implemented to give a complete classification of combinatorial spheres of dimension 3 with 9 vertices and decide polytopality of those spheres. In particular, we completely enumerate all combinatorial types of 4-dimensional polytopes with 9 vertices. It is shown that all of those combinatorial types are rational: They can be realized with rational coordinates. We find 316014 combinatorial spheres on 9 vertices. Of those, 274148 can be realized as the boundary complex of a four-dimensional polytope and the remaining 41866 a…
Several recent papers have addressed the problem of characterizing the $f$-vectors of cubical polytopes. This is largely motivated by the complete characterization of the $f$-vectors of simplicial polytopes given by Stanley, Billera, and Lee in 1980. Along these lines Blind and Blind have shown that unlike in the simplicial case, there are parity restrictions on the $f$-vectors of cubical polytopes. In particular, except for polygons, all even dimensional cubical polytopes must have an even number of vertices. Here this result is extended to a class of zonotopal complexes which includes simply…
There are two related poset structures, the higher Stasheff-Tamari orders, on the set of all triangulations of the cyclic $d$ polytope with $n$ vertices. In this paper it is shown that both of them have the homotopy type of a sphere of dimension $n-d-3$. Moreover, we resolve positively a new special case of the \emph{Generalized Baues Problem}: The Baues poset of all polytopal decompositions of a cyclic polytope of dimension $d \leq 3$ has the homotopy type of a sphere of dimension $n-d-2$.
We describe and analyze a new construction that produces new Eulerian lattices from old ones. It specializes to a construction that produces new strongly regular cellular spheres (whose face lattices are Eulerian). The construction does not always specialize to convex polytopes; however, in a number of cases where we can realize it, it produces interesting classes of polytopes. Thus we produce an infinite family of rational 2-simplicial 2-simple 4-polytopes, as requested by Eppstein, Kuperberg and Ziegler. We also construct for each $d\ge3$ an infinite family of $(d-2)$-simplicial 2-simple $d$…
We introduce the fatness parameter of a 4-dimensional polytope P, defined as ϕ(P)=(f_1+f_2)/(f_0+f_3). It arises in an important open problem in 4-dimensional combinatorial geometry: Is the fatness of convex 4-polytopes bounded? We describe and analyze a hyperbolic geometry construction that produces 4-polytopes with fatness ϕ(P)>5.048, as well as the first infinite family of 2-simple, 2-simplicial 4-polytopes. Moreover, using a construction via finite covering spaces of surfaces, we show that fatness is not bounded for the more general class of strongly regular CW decompositions of the 3-sphe…
In this paper, we discuss f- and flag-vectors of 4-dimensional convex polytopes and cellular 3-spheres. We put forward two crucial parameters of fatness and complexity: Fatness F(P) := (f_1+f_2-20)/(f_0+f_3-10) is large if there are many more edges and 2-faces than there are vertices and facets, while complexity C(P) := (f_{03}-20)/(f_0+f_3-10) is large if every facet has many vertices, and every vertex is in many facets. Recent results suggest that these parameters might allow one to differentiate between the cones of f- or flag-vectors of -- connected Eulerian lattices of length 5 (combinato…
We present a new algorithmic approach that can be used to determine whether a given quadruple $(f_0,f_1,f_2,f_3)$ is the f-vector of any convex 4-dimensional polytope. By implementing this approach, we classify the f-vectors of 4-polytopes in the range $f_0+f_3\le22$. In particular, we thus prove that there are f-vectors of cellular 3-spheres with the intersection property that are not f-vectors of any convex 4-polytopes, thus answering a question that may be traced back to the works of Steinitz (1906/1922). In the range $f_0+f_3\le22$, there are exactly three such f-vectors with $f_0\le f_3$,…
We present a first example of a flag vector of a polyhedral sphere that is not the flag vector of any polytope. Namely, there is a unique 3-sphere with the parameters $(f_0,f_1,f_2,f_3;f_{02})=(12,40,40,12;120)$, but this sphere is not realizable by a convex 4-polytope. The 3-sphere, which is 2-simple and 2-simplicial, was found by Werner (2009); we present results of a computer enumeration which imply that the sphere with these parameters is unique. We prove that it is non-polytopal in two ways: First, we show that it has no oriented matroid, and thus it is not realizable; this proof was foun…
We show that the $γ$-vector of the order complex of any polytope is the f-vector of a balanced simplicial complex. This is done by proving this statement for a subclass of Stanley's S-shellable spheres which includes all polytopes. The proof shows that certain parts of the cd-index, when specializing $c=1$ and considering the resulted polynomial in $d$, are the f-polynomials of simplicial complexes that can be colored with "few" colors. We conjecture that the cd-index of a regular CW-sphere is itself the flag f-vector of a colored simplicial complex in a certain sense.
In 1971, McMullen and Walkup posed the following conjecture, which is called the generalized lower bound conjecture: If $P$ is a simplicial $d$-polytope then its $h$-vector $(h_0,h_1,...,h_d)$ satisfies $h_0 \leq h_1 \leq ... \leq h_{\lfloor \frac d 2 \rfloor}$. Moreover, if $h_{r-1}=h_r$ for some $r \leq \frac d 2$ then $P$ can be triangulated without introducing simplices of dimension $\leq d-r$. The first part of the conjecture was solved by Stanley in 1980 using the hard Lefschetz theorem for projective toric varieties. In this paper, we give a proof of the remaining part of the conjecture…
A simplicial complex $Δ$ is called flag if all minimal nonfaces of $Δ$ have at most two elements. The following are proved: First, if $Δ$ is a flag simplicial pseudomanifold of dimension $d-1$, then the graph of $Δ$ (i) is $(2d-2)$-vertex-connected and (ii) has a subgraph which is a subdivision of the graph of the $d$-dimensional cross-polytope. Second, the $h$-vector of a flag simplicial homology sphere $Δ$ of dimension $d-1$ is minimized when $Δ$ is the boundary complex of the $d$-dimensional cross-polytope.
In this paper we study various scribability problems for polytopes. We begin with the classical $k$-scribability problem proposed by Steiner and generalized by Schulte, which asks about the existence of $d$-polytopes that cannot be realized with all $k$-faces tangent to a sphere. We answer this problem for stacked and cyclic polytopes for all values of $d$ and $k$. We then continue with the weak scribability problem proposed by Grünbaum and Shephard, for which we complete the work of Schulte by presenting non weakly circumscribable $3$-polytopes. Finally, we propose new $(i,j)$-scribability pr…
A cellular string of a polytope is a sequence of faces stacked on top of each other in a given direction. The poset of cellular strings, ordered by refinement, is known to be homotopy equivalent to a sphere. The subposet of coherent cellular strings is the face lattice of the fiber polytope, hence is homeomorphic to a sphere. In some special cases, every cellular string is coherent. Such polytopes are said to be all-coherent. We give a complete classification of zonotopes with the all-coherence property in terms of their oriented matroid structure. Although the face lattice of the fiber polyto…
In 1967, Grünmbaum conjectured that any $d$-dimensional polytope with $d+s\leq 2d$ vertices has at least \[ϕ_k(d+s,d) = {d+1 \choose k+1 }+{d \choose k+1 }-{d+1-s \choose k+1 } \] $k$-faces. This conjecture along with the characterization of equality cases was recently proved by the author. In this paper, several extensions of this result are established. Specifically, it is proved that lattices with the diamond property (for example, abstract polytopes) and $d+s\leq 2d$ atoms have at least $ϕ_k(d+s,d)$ elements of rank $k+1$. Furthermore, in the case of face lattices of strongly regular CW co…
We construct 2^{Ω(n^{5/4})} combinatorial types of triangulated 3-spheres on n vertices. Since by a result of Goodman and Pollack (1986) there are no more than 2^{O(n log n)} combinatorial types of simplicial 4-polytopes, this proves that asymptotically, there are far more combinatorial types of triangulated 3-spheres than of simplicial 4-polytopes on n vertices. This complements results of Kalai (1988), who had proved a similar statement about d-spheres and (d+1)-polytopes for fixed d >= 4.
We prove an explicit combinatorial formula for the expected number of faces of the zero polytope of the homogeneous and isotropic Poisson hyperplane tessellation in $\mathbb R^d$. The expected $f$-vector is expressed through the coefficients of the polynomial $$ (1+ (d-1)^2x^2) (1+(d-3)^2 x^2) (1+(d-5)^2 x^2) \ldots. $$ Also, we compute explicitly the expected $f$-vector and the expected volume of the spherical convex hull of $n$ random points sampled uniformly and independently from the $d$-dimensional half-sphere. In the case when $n=d+2$, we compute the probability that this spherical conve…
Given a set $Σ$ of spheres in $\mathbb{E}^d$, with $d\ge{}3$ and $d$ odd, having a fixed number of $m$ distinct radii $ρ_1,ρ_2,...,ρ_m$, we show that the worst-case combinatorial complexity of the convex hull $CH_d(Σ)$ of $Σ$ is $Θ(\sum_{1\le{}i\ne{}j\le{}m}n_in_j^{\lfloor\frac{d}{2}\rfloor})$, where $n_i$ is the number of spheres in $Σ$ with radius $ρ_i$. To prove the lower bound, we construct a set of $Θ(n_1+n_2)$ spheres in $\mathbb{E}^d$, with $d\ge{}3$ odd, where $n_i$ spheres have radius $ρ_i$, $i=1,2$, and $ρ_2\neρ_1$, such that their convex hull has combinatorial complexity $Ω(n_1n_2^{…
A famous theorem in polytope theory states that the combinatorial type of a simplicial polytope is completely determined by its facet-ridge graph. This celebrated result was proven by Blind and Mani in 1987, via a non-constructive proof using topological tools from homology theory. An elegant constructive proof was given by Kalai shortly after. In their original paper, Blind and Mani asked whether their result can be extended to simplicial spheres, and a positive answer to their question was conjectured by Kalai in 2009. In this paper, we show that Kalai's conjecture holds in the particular ca…
We construct many nonpolytopal nonsimplicial Gorenstein* meet semi-lattices with nonnegative toric g-vector, supporting a conjecture of Stanley. These are formed as Bier spheres over the face posets of multiplexes, polytopes constructed by Bisztriczky as generalizations of simplices.
Gale transform is a simple but powerful tool in convex geometry. In particular, the use of Gale transform is the main argument in the classification of polytopes with few vertices. Many books and documents cover the definition of Gale transform and its main properties related to convex polytopes. But it seems that there does not exist document studying the Gale transform of more general objects, such that triangulation of spheres. In this paper, we study the properties of the Gale transform of a large class of such spheres called starshaped spheres.
A two-step model for generating random polytopes is considered. For parameters $d$, $m$, and $p$, the first step is to generate a simple polytope $P$ whose facets are given by $m$ uniform random hyperplanes tangent to the unit sphere in $\mathbb{R}^d$, and the second step is to sample each vertex of $P$ independently with probability $p$ and let $Q$ be the convex hull of the sampled vertices. We establish results on how well $Q$ approximates the unit sphere in terms of $m$ and $p$ as well as asymptotics on the combinatorial complexity of $Q$ for certain regimes of $p$.
We construct a new 2-parameter family E_mn of self-dual 2-simple and 2-simplicial 4-polytopes, with flexible geometric realisations. E_44 is the 24-cell. For large m,n the f-vectors have ``fatness'' close to 6. The E_t-construction of Paffenholz and Ziegler applied to products of polygons yields cellular spheres with the combinatorial structure of E_mn. Here we prove polytopality of these spheres. More generally, we construct polytopal realisations for spheres obtained from the E_t-construction applied to products of polytopes in any dimension d>=3, if these polytopes satisfy some consistency …
For a simplicial complex K on m vertices and simplicial complexes K1,...,Km a composed simplicial complex K(K1,...,Km) is introduced. This construction generalizes an iterated simplicial wedge construction studied by A. Bahri, M. Bendersky, F. R. Cohen and S. Gitler and allows to describe the combinatorics of generalized joins of polytopes P(P1,...,Pm) defined by G. Agnarsson. The composition defines a structure of an operad on a set of finite simplicial complexes. We prove the following: (1) a composed complex K(K1,...,Km) is a simplicial sphere iff K is a simplicial sphere and Ki are the bou…
We construct CW spheres from the lattices that arise as the closed sets of a convex closure, the meet-distributive lattices. These spheres are nearly polytopal, in the sense that their barycentric subdivisions are simplicial polytopes. The complete information on the numbers of faces and chains of faces in these spheres can be obtained from the defining lattices in a manner analogous to the relation between arrangements of hyperplanes and their underlying geometric intersection lattices.
A well-known conjecture of McMullen, proved by Billera, Lee and Stanley, describes the face numbers of simple polytopes. The necessary and sufficient condition is that the toric g-vector of the polytope is an M-vector, that is, the vector of dimensions of graded pieces of a standard graded algebra A. Recent work by Murai, Nevo and Yanagawa suggests a similar condition for the coefficients of the cd-index of a poset P. The coefficients of the cd-index are conjectured to be the dimensions of graded pieces in a standard multigraded algebra A. We prove the conjecture for simplicial spheres and we …
There are (at least) two reasons to study random polytopes. The first is to understand the combinatorics and geometry of random polytopes especially as compared to other classes of polytopes, and the second is to analyze average-case complexity for algorithms which take polytopal data as input. However, establishing results in either of these directions often requires quite technical methods. Here we seek to give an elementary introduction to random polytopes avoiding these technicalities. In particular we explore the general paradigm that polytopes obtained from the convex hull of random poin…
Sometimes, it is possible to represent a complicated polytope as a projection of a much simpler polytope. To quantify this phenomenon, the extension complexity of a polytope $P$ is defined to be the minimum number of facets of a (possibly higher-dimensional) polytope from which $P$ can be obtained as a (linear) projection. This notion is motivated by its relevance to combinatorial optimisation, and has been studied intensively for various specific polytopes associated with important optimisation problems. In this paper we study extension complexity as a parameter of general polytopes, more spe…
We present some enumerative and structural results for flag homology spheres. For a flag homology sphere $Δ$, we show that its $γ$-vector $γ^Δ=(1,γ_1,γ_2,\ldots)$ satisfies: \begin{align*} γ_j=0,\text{ for all } j>γ_1, \quad γ_2\leq\binom{γ_1}{2}, \quad γ_{γ_1}\in\{0,1\}, \quad \text{ and }γ_{γ_1-1}\in\{0,1,2,γ_1\}, \end{align*} supporting a conjecture of Nevo and Petersen. Further we characterize the possible structures for $Δ$ in extremal cases. As an application, the techniques used produce infinitely many $f$-vectors of flag balanced simplicial complexes that are not $γ$-vectors of flag ho…
We study a natural generalization of the noncrossing relation between pairs of elements in [n] to k-tuples in [n] that was first considered by Petersen, Pylyavskyy, Speyer (2010). We give an alternative approach to their result that the flag simplicial complex on $\binom{[n]}{k}$ induced by this relation is a regular, unimodular and flag triangulation of the order polytope of the poset given by the product $[k]\times[n-k]$ of two chains (also called Gelfand-Tsetlin polytope), and that it is the join of a simplex and a sphere (that is, it is a Gorenstein triangulation). We then observe that thi…