We construct, for any positive integer n, a family of n congruent convex polyhedra in R^3, such that every pair intersects in a common facet. Previously, the largest such family contained only eight polytopes. Our polyhedra are Voronoi regions of evenly distributed points on the helix (t, cos t, sin t). With a simple modification, we can ensure that each polyhedron in the family has a point, a line, and a plane of symmetry. We also generalize our construction to higher dimensions and introduce a new family of cyclic polytopes.
We give an explicit construction, based on Hadamard matrices, for an infinite series of floor{sqrt{d}/2}-neighborly centrally symmetric d-dimensional polytopes with 4d vertices. This appears to be the best explicit version yet of a recent probabilistic result due to Linial and Novik, who proved the existence of such polytopes with a neighborliness of d/400.
In this paper we present a new technique to construct neighborly polytopes, and use it to prove a lower bound of ((r+d)^((r/2+d/2)^2))/(r^((r/2)^2)d^((d/2)^2)e^(3rd/4)) for the number of combinatorial types of vertex-labeled neighborly polytopes in even dimension d with r+d+1 vertices. This improves current bounds on the number of combinatorial types of polytopes. The previous best lower bounds for the number of neighborly polytopes were found by Shemer in 1982 using a technique called the Sewing Construction. We provide a simpler proof that sewing works, and generalize it to oriented matroids…
This thesis presents new applications of Gale duality to the study of polytopes, point configurations and oriented matroids with extremal combinatorial properties. The first part of the thesis explores construction techniques for neighborly polytopes and oriented matroids. First, we provide a new interpretation of Shemer's classical Sewing Construction for neighborly polytopes in terms of lexicographic extensions of oriented matroids. This allows us to provide a simplified proof and to generalize it to oriented matroids in two ways: the Extended Sewing Construction and the Gale Sewing Construc…
Simultaneously generalizing both neighborly and neighborly cubical polytopes, we introduce PSN polytopes: their k-skeleton is combinatorially equivalent to that of a product of r simplices. We construct PSN polytopes by three different methods, the most versatile of which is an extension of Sanyal and Ziegler's "projecting deformed products" construction to products of arbitrary simple polytopes. For general r and k, the lowest dimension we achieve is 2k+r+1. Using topological obstructions similar to those introduced by Sanyal to bound the number of vertices of Minkowski sums, we show that thi…
We construct a large family of neighborly polytopes that can be realized with all the vertices on the boundary of any smooth strictly convex body. In particular, we show that there are superexponentially many combinatorially distinct neighborly polytopes that admit realizations inscribed on the sphere. These are the first examples of inscribable neighborly polytopes that are not cyclic polytopes, and provide the current best lower bound for the number of combinatorial types of inscribable polytopes (which coincides with the current best lower bound for the number of combinatorial types of poly…
In this note, we prove that every open primary basic semialgebraic set is stably equivalent to the realization space of an even-dimensional neighborly polytope. This in particular provides the final step for Mnëv's proof of the universality theorem for simplicial polytopes.
Neighborly cubical polytopes are known as the cubical analogues of the cyclic polytopes. Using the short cubical $h$-vectors of cubical polytopes (introduced by Adin), we derive an explicit formula for the face numbers of the neighborly cubical polytopes. These face numbers form a unimodal sequence.
The degree of a point configuration is defined as the maximal codimension of its interior faces. This concept is motivated from a corresponding Ehrhart-theoretic notion for lattice polytopes and is related to neighborly polytopes and the generalized lower bound theorem and, by Gale duality, to Tverberg theory. The main results of this paper are a complete classification of point configurations of degree 1, as well as a structure result on point configurations whose degree is less than a third of the dimension. Statements and proofs involve the novel notion of a weak Cayley decomposition, and i…
We present explicit constructions of centrally symmetric 2-neighborly d-dimensional polytopes with about 3^{d/2} = (1.73)^d vertices and of centrally symmetric k-neighborly d-polytopes with about 2^{c_k d} vertices where c_k=3/20 k^2 2^k. Using this result, we construct for a fixed k > 1 and arbitrarily large d and N, a centrally symmetric d-polytope with N vertices that has at least (1-k^2 (gamma_k)^d) binom(N, k) faces of dimension k-1, where gamma_2=1/\sqrt{3} = 0.58 and gamma_k = 2^{-3/{20k^2 2^k}} for k > 2. Another application is a construction of a set of 3^{d/2 -1}-1 points in R^d ever…
We show that there exist k-neighborly centrally symmetric d-dimensional polytopes with 2(n+d) vertices, where k(d,n)=Theta(d/(1+log ((d+n)/d))). We also show that this bound is tight.
We give a complete enumeration of all 2-neighborly 0/1-polytopes of dimension 7. There are 13 959 358 918 different 0/1-equivalence classes of such polytopes. They form 5 850 402 014 combinatorial classes and 1 274 089 different f-vectors. It enables us to list some of their combinatorial properties. In particular, we have found a 2-neighborly polytope with 14 vertices and 16 facets.
What is the maximum number of vertices that a centrally symmetric 2-neighborly polytope of dimension $d$ can have? It is known that the answer does not exceed $2^d$. Here we provide an explicit construction showing that it is at least $2^{d-1}+2$.
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.
Neighborly polytopes are those that maximize the number of faces in each dimension among all polytopes with the same number of vertices. Despite their extremal properties they form a surprisingly rich class of polytopes, which has been widely studied and is the subject of many open problems and conjectures. In this paper, we study the enumeration of neighborly polytopes beyond the cases that have been computed so far. To this end, we enumerate neighborly oriented matroids --- a combinatorial abstraction of neighborly polytopes --- of small rank and corank. In particular, if we denote by OM($r,…
We give a complete enumeration of all 2-neighborly $d$-polytopes with $d+9$ and less facets. All of them are realized as 0/1-polytopes, except a 6-polytope $P_{6,10,15}$ with 10 vertices and 15 facets, and pyramids over $P_{6,10,15}$. In particular, we update the lower bounds for the number of facets of a 2-neighborly $d$-polytope $P$ and showed that the number of facets of $P$ is not less than the number of its vertices $f_0(P)$ for $f_0(P) \le d + 10$.
We have found the minimal difference $Δ(k) = \min\limits_P (f_{d-1}(P) - f_{0}(P))$ between the number of facets and the number of vertices of a $k$-neighborly $d$-polytope $P$ for the case $f_{0}(P) = d+3$: $Δ(2) = 4$, $Δ(3) = 15$, and $Δ(k) = 2 (k^2 - 1)$ for $k \ge 4$.
We introduce a deformed product construction for simple polytopes in terms of lower-triangular block matrix representations. We further show how Gale duality can be employed for the construction and for the analysis of deformed products such that specified faces (e.g. all the k-faces) are ``strictly preserved'' under projection. Thus, starting from an arbitrary neighborly simplicial (d-2)-polytope Q on n-1 vertices we construct a deformed n-cube, whose projection to the last dcoordinates yields a neighborly cubical d-polytope. As an extension of thecubical case, we construct matrix representat…
Neighborly cubical polytopes exist: for any $n\ge d\ge 2r+2$, there is a cubical convex d-polytope $C^n_d$ whose $r$-skeleton is combinatorially equivalent to that of the $n$-dimensional cube. This solves a problem of Babson, Billera & Chan. Kalai conjectured that the boundary $\partial C^n_d$ of a neighborly cubical polytope $C^n_d$ maximizes the $f$-vector among all cubical $(d-1)$-spheres with $2^n$ vertices. While we show that this is true for polytopal spheres for $n\le d+1$, we also give a counter-example for $d=4$ and $n=6$. Further, the existence of neighborly cubical polytopes shows t…
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.
Let $μ_{\text{2n}}(d,v)$ (respectively, $μ^{\text{s}}_{\text{2n}}(d,v)$) be the minimal number of facets of a (simplicial) 2-neighborly $d$-polytope with $v$ vertices, $v > d \ge 4$. It is known that $μ_{\text{2n}}(4,v) = v (v-3)/2$, $μ_{\text{2n}}(d, d+2) = d+5$, $μ_{\text{2n}}(d,d+3) = d+7$ for $d \ge 5$, and $μ_{\text{2n}}(d,d+4) \in [d+5, d+8]$ for $d \ge 6$. We show that $μ_{\text{2n}}(5, v) = Ω(v^{4/3})$, $μ_{\text{2n}}(6, v) \ge v$, and the equality $μ_{\text{2n}}(6, v) = v$ holds only for a simplex and for a dual 2-neighborly 6-polytope (if it exists) with $v \ge 27$. By using $g$-theo…
Although the Unimodality Conjecture holds for some certain classes of cubical polytopes (e.g. cubes, capped cubical polytopes, neighborly cubical polytopes), it fails for cubical polytopes in general. A 12-dimensional cubical polytope with non-unimodal face vector is constructed by using capping operations over a neighborly cubical polytope with 2 to the power 131 vertices. For cubical polytopes, the Unimodality Conjecture is proved for dimensions less than 11. The first one-third of the face vector of a cubical polytope is increasing and its last one-third is decreasing in any dimension.
We show that by cutting off the vertices and then the edges of neighborly cubical polytopes, one obtains simple 4-dimensional polytopes with n vertices such that all separators of the graph have size at least $Ω(n/\log^{3/2}n)$. This disproves a conjecture by Kalai from 1991/2004.
The "edge polytope" of a finite graph G is the convex hull of the columns of its vertex-edge incidence matrix. We study extremal problems for this class of polytopes. For k =2, 3, 5 we determine the maximum number of vertices of k-neighborly edge polytopes up to a sublinear term. We also construct a family of edge polytopes with exponentially-many facets.
The aim of this paper is to give a survey of the known results concerning centrally symmetric polytopes, spheres, and manifolds. We further enumerate nearly neighborly centrally symmetric spheres and centrally symmetric products of spheres with dihedral or cyclic symmetry on few vertices, and we present an infinite series of vertex-transitive nearly neighborly centrally symmetric 3-spheres.
In this note we investigate under which conditions the dual of the flow polytope (henceforth referred to as the `dual flow polytope') of a quiver is k-neighborly, for generic weights near the canonical weight. We provide a lower bound on k, depending only on the edge connectivity of the underlying graph, for such weights. In the case where the canonical weight is in fact generic, we explicitly determine a vertex presentation of the dual flow polytope. Finally, we specialize our results to the case of complete, bipartite quivers where we show that the canonical weight is indeed generic, and are…
A centrally symmetric analogue of the cyclic polytope, the bicyclic polytope, was defined in [BN08]. The bicyclic polytope is defined by the convex hull of finitely many points on the symmetric moment curve where the set of points has a symmetry about the origin. In this paper, we study the Barvinok-Novik orbitope, the convex hull of the symmetric moment curve. It was proven in [BN08] that the orbitope is locally $k$-neighborly, that is, the convex hull of any set of $k$ distinct points on an arc of length not exceeding $ϕ_k$ in $\mathbb{S}^1$ is a $(k-1)$-dimensional face of the orbitope for …
We derive tight expressions for the maximum number of $k$-faces, $0\le{}k\le{}d-1$, of the Minkowski sum, $P_1\oplus{}P_2$, of two $d$-dimensional convex polytopes $P_1$ and $P_2$, as a function of the number of vertices of the polytopes. For even dimensions $d\ge{}2$, the maximum values are attained when $P_1$ and $P_2$ are cyclic $d$-polytopes with disjoint vertex sets. For odd dimensions $d\ge{}3$, the maximum values are attained when $P_1$ and $P_2$ are $\lfloor\frac{d}{2}\rfloor$-neighborly $d$-polytopes, whose vertex sets are chosen appropriately from two distinct $d$-dimensional moment-…
According to Euler's relation any polytope P has as many faces of even dimension as it has faces of odd dimension. As a generalization of this fact one can compare the number of faces whose dimension is congruent to i modulo m with the number of all faces of P for some positive integer m and for some 0 < i < m+1. We show some classes of polytopes for which the above proportion is asymptotically equal to 1/m.
Tightness of a triangulated manifold is a topological condition, roughly meaning that any simplexwise linear embedding of the triangulation into euclidean space is "as convex as possible". It can thus be understood as a generalization of the concept of convexity. In even dimensions, super-neighborliness is known to be a purely combinatorial condition which implies the tightness of a triangulation. Here we present other sufficient and purely combinatorial conditions which can be applied to the odd-dimensional case as well. One of the conditions is that all vertex links are stacked spheres, whic…
We consider the convex hull B_k of the symmetric moment curve U(t)=(cos t, sin t, cos 3t, sin 3t, ..., cos (2k-1)t, sin (2k-1)t) in R^{2k}, where t ranges over the unit circle S= R/2pi Z. The curve U(t) is locally neighborly: as long as t_1, ..., t_k lie in an open arc of S of a certain length phi_k>0, the convex hull of the points U(t_1), ..., U(t_k) is a face of B_k. We characterize the maximum possible length phi_k, proving, in particular, that phi_k > pi/2 for all k and that the limit of phi_k is pi/2 as k grows. This allows us to construct centrally symmetric polytopes with a record numbe…
We consider polyhedra and 4-polytopes in Minkowski spacetime - in particular, null polyhedra with zero volume, and 4-polytopes that have such polyhedra as their hyperfaces. We present the basic properties of several classes of null-faced 4-polytopes: 4-simplices, "tetrahedral diamonds" and 4-parallelotopes. We propose a "most regular" representative of each class. The most-regular parallelotope is of particular interest: its edges, faces and hyperfaces are all congruent, and it features both null hyperplanes and null segments. A tiling of spacetime with copies of this polytope can be viewed al…
Consider a set of $r$ convex $d$-polytopes $P_1,P_2,...,P_r$, where $d\ge{}3$ and $r\ge{}2$, and let $n_i$ be the number of vertices of $P_i$, $1\le{}i\le{}r$. It has been shown by Fukuda and Weibel that the number of $k$-faces of the Minkowski sum, $P_1+P_2+...+P_r$, is bounded from above by $Φ_{k+r}(n_1,n_2,...,n_r)$, where $Φ_{\ell}(n_1,n_2,...,n_r)= \sum_{\substack{1\le{}s_i\le{}n_i s_1+...+s_r=\ell}} \prod_{i=1}^r\binom{n_i}{s_i}$, $\ell\ge{}r$. Fukuda and Weibel have also shown that the upper bound mentioned above is tight for $d\ge{}4$, $2\le{}r\le{}\lfloor\frac{d}{2}\rfloor$, and for a…
