The aim of this paper is the determination of the largest $n$-dimensional polytope with $n+3$ vertices of unit diameter. This is a special case of a more general problem proposed by Graham.
We study the Minkowski length L(P) of a lattice polytope P, which is defined to be the largest number of non-trivial primitive segments whose Minkowski sum lies in P. The Minkowski length represents the largest possible number of factors in a factorization of polynomials with exponent vectors in P, and shows up in lower bounds for the minimum distance of toric codes. In this paper we give a polytime algorithm for computing L(P) where P is a 3D lattice polytope. We next study 3D lattice polytopes of Minkowski length 1. In particular, we show that if Q, a subpolytope of P, is the Minkowski sum o…
We construct small covers and quasitoric manifolds over $n$-dimensional simple polytopes which allow proper colorings of facets with $n$ colors. We calculate Stiefel-Whitney classes of these manifolds as obstructions to immersions and embeddings into Euclidean spaces. The largest dimension required for embedding is achieved in the case $n$ is a power of two.
Given a $d$-dimensional convex polytope $P$ and nonnegative integer $k$ not exceeding $d-1$, let $G_k (P)$ denote the simple graph on the node set of $k$-dimensional faces of $P$ in which two such faces are adjacent if there exists a $(k+1)$-dimensional face of $P$ which contains them both. The graph $G_k (P)$ is isomorphic to the dual graph of the $(d-k)$-dimensional skeleton of the normal fan of $P$. For fixed values of $k$ and $d$, the largest integer $m$ such that $G_k (P)$ is $m$-vertex-connected for all $d$-dimensional polytopes $P$ is determined. This result generalizes Balinski's theor…
An abstract polytope of rank n is said to be chiral if its automorphism group has precisely two orbits on the flags, such that adjacent flags belong to distinct orbits. The present paper describes a general method for deriving new finite chiral polytopes from old finite chiral polytopes of the same rank. In particular, the technique is used to construct many new examples in ranks 3, 4 and 5.
In the frame of a classification of general square systems of polynomial equations solvable by radicals, Esterov and Gusev succeeded in classifying all spanning lattice polytopes whose normalized volumes are at most $4$. In the present paper, we complete to classify all lattice polytopes whose normalized volumes are at most $4$ based on the known classification of their $δ$-polynomials.
We define a centrally symmetric analogue of the cyclic polytope and study its facial structure. We conjecture that our polytopes provide asymptotically the largest number of faces in all dimensions among all centrally symmetric polytopes with n vertices of a given even dimension d=2k when d is fixed and n grows. For a fixed even dimension d=2k and an integer 0< j <k we prove that the maximum possible number of j-dimensional faces of a centrally symmetric d-dimensional polytope with n vertices is at least (c_j(d)+o(1)) {n \choose j+1} for some c_j(d)>0 and at most (1-2^{-d}+o(1)){n \choose j+1}…
We show that the largest possible diameter $δ(d,k)$ of a $d$-dimensional polytope whose vertices have integer coordinates ranging between $0$ and $k$ is at most $kd-\lceil2d/3\rceil$ when $k\geq3$. In addition, we show that $δ(4,3)=8$. This substantiates the conjecture whereby $δ(d,k)$ is at most $\lfloor(k+1)d/2\rfloor$ and is achieved by a Minkowski sum of lattice vectors.
The rank of a $d$-dimensional polytope $P$ is defined by $F-(d+1)$, where $F$ denotes the number of facets of $P$. In this paper, We focus on the toric rings of $(0,1)$-polytopes with small rank. We study their normality, the torsionfreeness of their divisor class groups and the classification of their isomorphism classes.
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.
We show that there are simple 4-dimensional polytopes with n vertices such that all separators of the graph have size at least $Ω(n/\log n)$. This establishes a strong form of a claim by Thurston, for which the construction and proof had been lost. We construct the polytopes by cutting off the vertices and then the edges of a particular type of neighborly cubical polytopes. The graphs of simple polytopes thus obtained are 4-regular; they contain 3-regular "cube-connected cycle graphs" as minors of spanning subgraphs.
The problem of finding a triangulation of a convex three-dimensional polytope with few tetrahedra is proved to be NP-hard. We discuss other related complexity results.
A sequence of vertices in a graph is called a \emph{(total) legal dominating sequence} if every vertex in the sequence (total) dominates at least one vertex not dominated by those ones that precede it, and at the end all vertices of the graph are (totally) dominated. The \emph{Grundy (total) domination number} of a graph is the size of the largest (total) legal dominating sequence. In this work, we address the problems of determining these two parameters by introducing a generalized version of them. We explicitly calculate the corresponding (general) parameter for paths and web graphs. We prop…
The chromatic number for properly colouring the facets of a combinatorial simple $n$-polytope $P^n$ that is the orbit space of a quasitoric manifold satisfies the inequality $n\leq P^n\leq 2^n-1$. The inequality is sharp for $n=2$ but not for $n=3$ due to the Four Color theorem. In this note, we construct a simple 4-polytope admitting a characteristic map whose chromatic number equals $15$ and deduce that the predicted upper bound is attained for $n=4$. Analogues results are verified for the case of oriented small covers in dimensions $4$ and $5$.
We define the excess degree $ξ(P)$ of a $d$-polytope $P$ as $2f_1-df_0$, where $f_0$ and $f_1$ denote the number of vertices and edges, respectively. This parameter measures how much $P$ deviates from being simple. It turns out that the excess degree of a $d$-polytope does not take every natural number: the smallest possible values are $0$ and $d-2$, and the value $d-1$ only occurs when $d=3$ or 5. On the other hand, for fixed $d$, the number of values not taken by the excess degree is finite if $d$ is odd, and the number of even values not taken by the excess degree is finite if $d$ is even. …
We explore the connection between simple polytopes and self-dual binary codes via the theory of small covers. We first show that a small cover $M^n$ over a simple $n$-polytope $P^n$ produces a self-dual code in the sense of Kreck-Puppe if and only if $P^n$ is $n$-colorable and $n$ is odd. Then we show how to describe such a self-dual binary code in terms of the combinatorial information of $P^n$. Moreover, we can define a family of binary codes $\mathfrak{B}_k(P^n)$, $0\leq k\leq n$, from an arbitrary simple $n$-polytope $P^n$. We will give some necessary and sufficient conditions for $\mathfr…
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 $f_0\le f_3$,…
This paper discusses properties of the graphs of 2-way and 3-way transportation polytopes, in particular, their possible numbers of vertices and their diameters. Our main results include a quadratic bound on the diameter of axial 3-way transportation polytopes and a catalogue of non-degenerate transportation polytopes of small sizes. The catalogue disproves five conjectures about these polyhedra stated in the monograph by Yemelichev et al. (1984). It also allowed us to discover some new results. For example, we prove that the number of vertices of an $m\times n$ transportation polytope is a mu…
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 $G$ be a semisimple algebraic group over $\mathbb{C}$. For a reduced word $\bf i$ of the longest element in the Weyl group of $G$ and a dominant integral weight $λ$, one can construct the string polytope $Δ_{\bf i}(λ)$, whose lattice points encode the character of the irreducible representation $V_λ$. The string polytope $Δ_{\bf i}(λ)$ is singular in general and combinatorics of string polytopes heavily depends on the choice of $\mathbf i$. In this paper, we study combinatorics of string polytopes when $G = SL_{n+1}(\mathbb{C})$, and present a sufficient condition on $\mathbf i$ such that …
We present a number of complexity results concerning the problem of counting vertices of an integral polytope defined by a system of linear inequalities. The focus is on polytopes with small integer vertices, particularly 0/1 polytopes and half-integral polytopes.
The Minkowski length of a lattice polytope $P$ is a natural generalization of the lattice diameter of $P$. It can be defined as the largest number of lattice segments whose Minkowski sum is contained in $P$. The famous Ehrhart theorem states that the number of lattice points in the positive integer dilates $tP$ of a lattice polytope $P$ behaves polynomially in $t\in\mathbb{N}$. In this paper we prove that for any lattice polytope $P$, the Minkowski length of $tP$ for $t\in\mathbb{N}$ is eventually a quasi-polynomial with linear constituents. We also give a formula for the Minkowski length of c…
We show that the shadow vertex algorithm can be used to compute a short path between a given pair of vertices of a polytope P = {x : Ax \leq b} along the edges of P, where A \in R^{m \times n} is a real-valued matrix. Both, the length of the path and the running time of the algorithm, are polynomial in m, n, and a parameter 1/delta that is a measure for the flatness of the vertices of P. For integer matrices A \in Z^{m \times n} we show a connection between delta and the largest absolute value Delta of any sub-determinant of A, yielding a bound of O(Delta^4 m n^4) for the length of the compute…
The Birkhoff polytope B(n) is the convex hull of all (n x n) permutation matrices, i.e., matrices where precisely one entry in each row and column is one, and zeros at all other places. This is a widely studied polytope with various applications throughout mathematics. In this paper we study combinatorial types L of faces of a Birkhoff polytope. The Birkhoff dimension bd(L) of L is the smallest n such that B(n) has a face with combinatorial type L. By a result of Billera and Sarangarajan, a combinatorial type L of a d-dimensional face appears in some B(k) for k less or equal to 2d, so bd(L) is…
We establish sharp asymptotic estimates for the diameter of primitive zonotopes when their dimension is fixed. We also prove that, for infinitely many integers $k$, the largest possible diameter of a lattice zonotope contained in the hypercube $[0,k]^d$ is uniquely achieved by a primitive zonotope. As a consequence, we obtain that this largest diameter grows like $k^{d/(d+1)}$ up to an explicit multiplicative constant, when $d$ is fixed and $k$ goes to infinity, providing a new lower bound on the largest possible diameter of a lattice polytope contained in $[0,k]^d$.
Grünbaum, Barnette, and Reay in 1974 completed the characterization of the pairs $(f_i,f_j)$ of face numbers of $4$-dimensional polytopes. Here we obtain a complete characterization of the pairs of flag numbers $(f_0,f_{03})$ for $4$-polytopes. Furthermore, we describe the pairs of face numbers $(f_0,f_{d-1})$ for $d$-polytopes; this description is complete for even $d\ge6$ except for finitely many exceptional pairs that are "small" in a well-defined sense, while for odd $d$ we show that there are also "large" exceptional pairs. Our proofs rely on the insight that "small" pairs need to be defi…
The diameter of the graph of a $d$-dimensional lattice polytope $P \subseteq [0,k]^{n}$ is known to be at most $dk$ due to work by Kleinschmidt and Onn. However, it is an open question whether the monotone diameter, the shortest guaranteed length of a monotone path, of a $d$-dimensional lattice polytope $P = \{\mathbf{x}: A\mathbf{x} \leq \mathbf{b}\} \subseteq [0,k]^{n}$ is bounded by a polynomial in $d$ and $k$. This question is of particular interest in linear optimization, since paths traced by the Simplex method must be monotone. We introduce partial results in this direction including a …
Let $Δ$ be an $n$-dimensional lattice polytope. The smallest non-negative integer $i$ such that $k Δ$ contains no interior lattice points for $1 \leq k \leq n - i$ we call the degree of $Δ$. We consider lattice polytopes of fixed degree $d$ and arbitrary dimension $n$. Our main result is a complete classification of $n$-dimensional lattice polytopes of degree $d=1$. This is a generalization of the classification of lattice polygons $(n=2)$ without interior lattice points due to Arkinstall, Khovanskii, Koelman and Schicho. Our classification shows that the secondary polytope of a lattice polyto…
Consider the Birkhoff polytope of n by n doubly-stochastic matrices. As the Birkhoff-von Neumann theorem famously states, its vertex set coincides with the set of all n by n permutation matrices. Here we seek a higher-dimensional analog of this basic fact. Namely, consider the polytope which consists of all tristochastic arrays of order n. These are n by n by n arrays with nonnegative entries in which every line sums to 1. What can be said about its vertex set? It is well-known that an order-n Latin square may be viewed as a tristochastic array where every line contains n-1 zeros and a single …
We show that the edge graph of a 6-dimensional polytope with 12 facets has diameter at most 6, thus verifying the d-step conjecture of Klee and Walkup in the case of d=6. This implies that for all pairs (d,n) with n-d \leq 6 the diameter of the edge graph of a d-polytope with n facets is bounded by 6, which proves the Hirsch conjecture for all n-d \leq 6. We show this result by showing this bound for a more general structure -- so-called matroid polytopes -- by reduction to a small number of satisfiability problems.
The Voronoi conjecture on parallelohedra claims that for every convex polytope $P$ that tiles Euclidean $d$-dimensional space with translations there exists a $d$-dimensional lattice such that $P$ and the Voronoi polytope of this lattice are affinely equivalent. The Voronoi conjecture is still open for the general case but it is known that some combinatorial restriction for the face structure of $P$ ensure that the Voronoi conjecture holds for $P$. In this paper we prove that if $P$ is the Voronoi polytope of one of the dual root lattices $\mathsf{D}_d^*$, $\mathsf{E}_6^*$, $\mathsf{E}_7^*$ or…
Toric topology assigns to each $n$-dimensional combinatorial simple convex polytope $P$ with $m$ facets an $(m+n)$-dimensional moment-angle manifold $\mathcal{Z}_P$ with an action of a compact torus $T^m$ such that $\mathcal{Z}_P/T^m$ is a convex polytope of combinatorial type $P$. A simple $n$-polytope is called $B$-rigid, if any isomorphism of graded rings $H^*(\mathcal{Z}_P,\mathbb Z)= H^*(\mathcal{Z}_Q,\mathbb Z)$ for a simple $n$-polytope $Q$ implies that $P$ and $Q$ are combinatorially equivalent. An ideal almost Pogorelov polytope is a combinatorial $3$-polytope obtained by cutting off …
Extended formulations are an important tool to obtain small (even compact) formulations of polytopes by representing them as projections of higher dimensional ones. It is an important question whether a polytope admits a small extended formulation, i.e., one involving only a polynomial number of inequalities in its dimension. For the case of symmetric extended formulations (i.e., preserving the symmetries of the polytope) Yannakakis established a powerful technique to derive lower bounds and rule out small formulations. We rephrase the technique of Yannakakis in a group-theoretic framework. Th…
An extended formulation of a polytope P is a polytope Q which can be projected onto P. Extended formulations of small size (i.e., number of facets) are of interest, as they allow to model corresponding optimization problems as linear programs of small sizes. The main known lower bounds on the minimum sizes of extended formulations for fixed polytope P (Yannakakis 1991) are closely related to the concept of nondeterministic communication complexity. We study the relative power and limitations of the bounds on several examples.
The main objects of the present paper are (i) Hibi rings (toric rings arising from order polytopes of posets), (ii) stable set rings (toric rings arising from stable set polytopes of perfect graphs), and (iii) edge rings (toric rings arising from edge polytopes of graphs satisfying the odd cycle condition). The goal of the present paper is to analyze those three toric rings and to discuss their structures in the case where their class groups have small rank. We prove that the class groups of (i), (ii) and (iii) are torsionfree. More precisely, we give descriptions of their class groups. Moreov…
We investigate small covers and quasitoric over the duals of neighborly simplicial polytopes with small number of vertices in dimensions $4$, $5$, $6$ and $7$. In the most of the considered cases we obtain the complete classification of small covers. The lifting conjecture in all cases is verified to be true. The problem of cohomological rigidity for small covers is also studied and we have found a whole new series of weakly cohomologically rigid simple polytopes. New examples of manifolds provide the first known examples of quasitoric manifolds in higher dimensions whose orbit polytopes have …
The positive semidefinite (psd) rank of a polytope is the size of the smallest psd cone that admits an affine slice that projects linearly onto the polytope. The psd rank of a d-polytope is at least d+1, and when equality holds we say that the polytope is psd-minimal. In this paper we develop new tools for the study of psd-minimality and use them to give a complete classification of psd-minimal 4-polytopes. The main tools introduced are trinomial obstructions, a new algebraic obstruction for psd-minimality, and the slack ideal of a polytope, which encodes the space of realizations of a polytop…
A small cover was introduced by Davis and Januszkiewicz as an $n$-dimensional closed manifold with a locally standard $Z_2)^n$-action such that its orbit space is a simple convex polytope. There exist a one-to-one correspondence between small covers and $(Z_2)^n$-colored polytopes. In this paper we study a construction of 3-dimensional small covers by using two operations called a connected sum and a surgery. These operations correspondent to combinatorial operations on $(Z_2)^3$-colored simple convex polytopes. We shall show that each 3-dimensional small cover can be constructed from $T^3$, $…
We propose a variant of the Chvatal-Gomory procedure that will produce a sufficient set of facet normals for the integer hulls of all polyhedra {xx : Ax <= b} as b varies. The number of steps needed is called the small Chvatal rank (SCR) of A. We characterize matrices for which SCR is zero via the notion of supernormality which generalizes unimodularity. SCR is studied in the context of the stable set problem in a graph, and we show that many of the well-known facet normals of the stable set polytope appear in at most two rounds of our procedure. Our results reveal a uniform hypercyclic struct…
Linear constraints for a matrix polytope with no fractional vertex are investigated as intersecting research among permutation codes, rank modulations, and linear programming methods. By focusing the discussion to the block structure of matrices, new classes of such polytopes are obtained from known small polytopes. This concept, called "consolidation", is applied to find a new compact graph which is known as an approach for the graph isomorphism problem. Encoding and decoding algorithms for our new permutation codes are obtained from existing algorithms for small polytopes. The minimum distan…
Let $A$ be a polytope in $\mathbb{R}^d$ (not necessarily convex or connected). We say that $A$ is spectral if the space $L^2(A)$ has an orthogonal basis consisting of exponential functions. A result due to Kolountzakis and Papadimitrakis (2002) asserts that if $A$ is a spectral polytope, then the total area of the $(d-1)$-dimensional faces of $A$ on which the outward normal is pointing at a given direction, must coincide with the total area of those $(d-1)$-dimensional faces on which the outward normal is pointing at the opposite direction. In this paper, we prove an extension of this result t…
We provide a characterization of the radii minimal projections of polytopes onto $j$-dimensional subspaces in Euclidean space $\E^n$. Applied on simplices this characterization allows to reduce the computation of an outer radius to a computation in the circumscribing case or to the computation of an outer radius of a lower-dimensional simplex. In the second part of the paper, we use this characterization to determine the sequence of outer $(n-1)$-radii of regular simplices (which are the radii of smallest enclosing cylinders). This settles a question which arose from the incidence that a paper…
We prove upper bounds on the graph diameters of polytopes in two settings. The first is a worst-case bound for polytopes defined by integer constraints in terms of the height of the integers and certain subdeterminants of the constraint matrix, which in some cases improves previously known results. The second is a smoothed analysis bound: given an appropriately normalized polytope, we add small Gaussian noise to each constraint. We consider a natural geometric measure on the vertices of the perturbed polytope (corresponding to the mean curvature measure of its polar) and show that with high pr…