This note is a comment to the paper by D.R.Heath-Brown and B.Z.Moroz (Math Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 125 (1999)). That paper concerns with the projective surface $S$ in $\mathbb{P}^{3}$ defined by the equation $x_{1}x_{2}x_{3}=x_{4}^{3}$. It is shown there that the evaluation of the leading term of the asymptotic formula for the number of rational points of bounded height in $S(\Q)$ is equivalent to the evaluation of the volume of some 6-dimensional polytope $¶$. The volume of $¶$ is known from several papers; we calculate this volume by elementary method using symmetry of the polytope $¶$. We also discuss a combinatorial structure of $¶$.
Inscribability of polytopes is a classic subject but also a lively research area nowadays. We illustrate this with a selection of well-known results and recent developments on six particular topics related to inscribable polytopes. Along the way we collect a list of (new and old) open questions.
We establish estimates for the asymptotic best approximation of the Euclidean unit ball by polytopes under a notion of distance induced by the intrinsic volumes. We also introduce a notion of distance between convex bodies that is induced by the Wills functional, and apply it to derive asymptotically sharp bounds for approximating the ball in high dimensions. Remarkably, it turns out that there is a polytope which is almost optimal with respect to all intrinsic volumes simultaneously, up to absolute constants. Finally, we establish asymptotic formulas for the best approximation of smooth conve…
Recently, K.-Y. Wu introduced affine subspace concentration conditions for the cone volumes of polytopes and proved that the cone volumes of centered, reflexive, smooth lattice polytopes satisfy these conditions. We extend the result to arbitrary centered polytopes.
Given a polytope $\mathcal{P}$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ and a subset $U$ of its vertices, is there a triangulation of $\mathcal{P}$ using $d$-simplices that all contain $U$? We answer this question by proving an equivalent and easy-to-check combinatorial criterion for the facets of $\mathcal{P}$. Our proof relates triangulations of $\mathcal{P}$ to triangulations of its "shadow", a projection to a lower-dimensional space determined by $U$. In particular, we obtain a formula relating the volume of $\mathcal{P}$ with the volume of its shadow. This leads to an exact formula for the volume of a polytope …
We study properties of the volume of projections of the $n$-dimensional cross-polytope $\crosp^n = \{ x \in \R^n \mid |x_1| + \dots + |x_n| \leqslant 1\}.$ We prove that the projection of $\crosp^n$ onto a $k$-dimensional coordinate subspace has the maximum possible volume for $k=2$ and for $k=3.$ We obtain the exact lower bound on the volume of such a projection onto a two-dimensional plane. Also, we show that there exist local maxima which are not global ones for the volume of a projection of $\crosp^n$ onto a $k$-dimensional subspace for any $n > k \geqslant 2.$
For a convex body $K \subset {\mathbb R}^n$, let $K^z = \{y\in{\mathbb R}^n : \langle y-z, x-z\rangle\le 1, \mbox{\ for all\ } x\in K\}$ be the polar body of $K$ with respect to the center of polarity $z \in {\mathbb R}^n$. The goal of this paper is to study the maximum of the volume product $\mathcal{P}(K)=\min_{z\in {\rm int}(K)}|K||K^z|$, among convex polytopes $K\subset {\mathbb R}^n$ with a number of vertices bounded by some fixed integer $m \ge n+1$. In particular, we prove that the supremum is reached at a simplicial polytope with exactly $m$ vertices and we provide a new proof of a res…
Given a lattice $L$, a full dimensional polytope $P$ is called a {\em Delaunay polytope} if the set of its vertices is $S\cap L$ with $S$ being an {\em empty sphere} of the lattice. Extending our previous work \cite{DD-hyp} on the {\em hypermetric cone} $HYP_7$, we classify the six-dimensional Delaunay polytopes according to their {\em combinatorial type}. The list of 6241 combinatorial types is obtained by a study of the set of faces of the polyhedral cone $HYP_7$.
We overview the volume calculations for polyhedra in Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic spaces. We prove the Sforza formula for the volume of an arbitrary tetrahedron in $H^3$ and $S^3$. We also present some results, which provide a solution for Seidel problem on the volume of non-Euclidean tetrahedron. Finally, we consider a convex hyperbolic quadrilateral inscribed in a circle, horocycle or one branch of equidistant curve. This is a natural hyperbolic analog of the cyclic quadrilateral in the Euclidean plane. We find a few versions of the Brahmagupta formula for the area of such quadrilater…
Mahler's conjecture asks whether the cube is a minimizer for the volume product of a body and its polar in the class of symmetric convex bodies in a fixed dimension. It is known that every Hanner polytope has the same volume product as the cube or the cross-polytope. In this paper we prove that every Hanner polytope is a strict local minimizer for the volume product in the class of symmetric convex bodies endowed with the Banach-Mazur distance.
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.
This note provides a simple proof for the equality between the normalized volume of a convex polytope with $m$ vertices and the mixed volume of $m$ simplices and thus shows the seemingly restrictive problem of computing mixed volume of simplices is still at least as hard as computing volumes of convex polytopes.
The intrinsic volumes of Gaussian polytopes are considered. A lower variance bound for these quantities is proved, showing that, under suitable normalization, the variances converge to strictly positive limits. The implications of this missing piece of the jigsaw in the theory of Gaussian polytopes are discussed.
Short and transparent proofs of central limit theorems for intrinsic volumes of random polytopes in smooth convex bodies are presented. They combine different tools such as estimates for floating bodies with Stein's method from probability theory.
In this paper, we classify all the hyperbolic non-compact Coxeter polytopes of finite volume combinatorial type of which is either a pyramid over a product of two simplices or a product of two simplices of dimension greater than one. Combined with results of Kaplinskaja (1974) and Esselmann (1996) this completes the classification of hyperbolic Coxeter n-polytopes of finite volume with n+2 facets.
We describe the computation of polytope volumes by descent in the face lattice, its implementation in Normaliz, and the connection to reverse-lexicographic triangulations. The efficiency of the algorithm is demonstrated by several high dimensional polytopes of different characteristics. Finally, we present an application to voting theory where polytope volumes appear as probabilities of certain paradoxa.
The cone-volume measure of a polytope with centroid at the origin is proved to satisfy the subspace concentration condition. As a consequence a conjectured (a dozen years ago) fundamental sharp affine isoperimetric inequality for the U-functional is completely established -- along with its equality conditions.
We show that the volume of the inner $r$-neighborhood of a polytope in the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space is a pluri-phase Steiner-like function, i.e. a continuous piecewise polynomial function of degree $d$, proving thus a conjecture of Lapidus and Pearse. In the case when the polytope is dimension-wise equiangular we determine the coefficients of the initial polynomial as functions of the dihedral angles and the skeletal volumes of the polytope. We discuss also the degree of differentiability of this function and give a lower bound in terms of the set of normal vectors of the hyperplanes de…
The circumcenter of mass of a simplicial polytope $P$ is defined as follows: triangulate $P$, assign to each simplex its circumcenter taken with weight equal to the volume of the simplex, and then find the center of mass of the resulting system of point masses. The so obtained point is independent of the triangulation. The aim of the present note is to give a definition of the circumcenter of mass that does not rely on a triangulation. To do so we investigate how volumes of polytopes change under Möbius transformations.
We study the expected volume of random polytopes generated by taking the convex hull of independent identically distributed points from a given distribution. We show that for log-concave distributions supported on convex bodies, we need at least exponentially many (in dimension) samples for the expected volume to be significant and that super-exponentially many samples suffice for concave measures when their parameter of concavity is positive.
We find minimal and maximal length of intersections of lines at a fixed distance to the origin with the cross-polytope. We also find maximal volume noncentral sections of the cross-polypote by hyperplanes which are at a fixed large distance to the origin and minimal volume sections by symmetric slabs of a large fixed width. This parallels recent results about noncentral sections of the cube due to Moody, Stone, Zach and Zvavitch.
The beta polytope $P_{n,d}^β$ is the convex hull of $n$ i.i.d. random points distributed in the unit ball of $\mathbb{R}^d$ according to a density proportional to $(1-\lVert{x}\rVert^2)^β$ if $β>-1$ (in particular, $β=0$ corresponds to the uniform distribution in the ball), or uniformly on the unit sphere if $β=-1$. We show that the expected normalized volumes of high-dimensional beta polytopes exhibit a phase transition and we describe its shape. We derive analogous results for the intrinsic volumes of beta polytopes and, when $β=0$, their number of vertices.
In this work, we find an explicit expression for the volume of the trace nonnegative polytope via a generalization of the Irwin-Hall distribution. This volume is an upper bound for the volume of all projected, normalized realizable spectra. We provide ancillary results on realizable trace-zero spectra and pose several problems suitable for further inquiry.
The aim of this paper is to prove isoperimetric inequalities for simplices and polytopes with $d+2$ vertices in Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic $d$-space. In particular, we find the minimal volume $d$-dimensional hyperbolic simplices and spherical tetrahedra of a given inradius. Furthermore, we investigate the properties of maximal volume spherical and hyperbolic polytopes with $d+2$ vertices with a given circumradius, and the hyperbolic polytopes with $d+2$ vertices with a given inradius and having a minimal volume or minimal total edge length. Finally, for any $1 \leq k \leq d$, we inves…
We consider the moments of the volume of the symmetric convex hull of independent random points in an $n$-dimensional symmetric convex body. We calculate explicitly the second and fourth moments for $n$ points when the given body is $B_q^n$ (and all of the moments for the case $q = 2$), and derive from these the asymptotic behavior of the expected volume of a random simplex in those bodies.
We show by a direct construction that there are at least $\exp\{cV^{(d-1)/(d+1)}\}$ convex lattice polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ of volume $V$ that are different in the sense that none of them can be carried to an other one by a lattice preserving affine transformation. This is achieved by considering the family $\mathcal{P}^d(r)$ (to be defined in the text) of convex lattice polytopes whose volumes are between $0$ and $r^d/d!$. Namely we prove that for $P \in \mathcal{P}^d(r)$, $d!\mathrm{vol\;} P$ takes all possible integer values between $cr^{d-1}$ and $r^d$ where $c>0$ is a constant dependin…
We give an upper bound on the volume vol(P*) of a polytope P* dual to a d-dimensional lattice polytope P with exactly one interior lattice point, in each dimension d. This bound, expressed in terms of the Sylvester sequence, is sharp, and is achieved by the dual to a particular reflexive simplex. Our result implies a sharp upper bound on the volume of a d-dimensional reflexive polytope. Translated into toric geometry, this gives a sharp upper bound on the anti-canonical degree $(-K_X)^d$ of a d-dimensional toric Fano variety X with at worst canonical singularities.
Let $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ be a standard normal sample in $\mathbb R^d$. We compute exactly the expected volume of the Gaussian polytope $\mathrm{conv}[X_1,\ldots,X_n]$, the symmetric Gaussian polytope $\mathrm{conv}[\pm X_1,\ldots,\pm X_n]$, and the Gaussian zonotope $[0,X_1]+\ldots+[0,X_n]$ by exploiting their connection to the regular simplex, the regular crosspolytope, and the cube with the aid of Tsirelson's formula. The expected volumes of these random polytopes are given by essentially the same expressions as the intrinsic volumes and external angles of the regular polytopes. For all these qu…
Let $K$ be a convex body in $\mathbb{R}^d$ which slides freely in a ball. Let $K^{(n)}$ denote the intersection of $n$ closed half-spaces containing $K$ whose bounding hyperplanes are independent and identically distributed according to a certain prescribed probability distribution. We prove an asymptotic formula for the expectation of the difference of the volumes of $K^{(n)}$ and $K$, and an asymptotic upper bound on the variance of the volume of $K^{(n)}$. We achieve these results by first proving similar statements for weighted mean width approximations of convex bodies that admit a rollin…
In this letter, we introduce a novel message-passing algorithm for a class of problems which can be mathematically understood as estimating volume-related properties of random polytopes. Unlike the usual approach consisting in approximating the real-valued cavity marginal distributions by a few parameters, we propose a weighted message-passing algorithm to deal with the entire function. Various alternatives of how to implement our approach are discussed and numerical results for random polytopes are compared with results using the Hit-and-Run algorithm.
In (the surface of) a convex polytope P^n in R^n+1, for small prescribed volume, geodesic balls about some vertex minimize perimeter. This revision corrects a mistake in the mass bound argument in the proof of Theorem 3.8.
Suppose we choose $N$ points uniformly randomly from a convex body in $d$ dimensions. How large must $N$ be, asymptotically with respect to $d$, so that the convex hull of the points is nearly as large as the convex body itself? It was shown by Dyer-Füredi-McDiarmid that exponentially many samples suffice when the convex body is the hypercube, and by Pivovarov that the Euclidean ball demands roughly $d^{d/2}$ samples. We show that when the convex body is the simplex, exponentially many samples suffice; this then implies the same result for any convex simplicial polytope with at most exponentia…
Minkowski's second theorem on successive minima gives an upper bound on the volume of a convex body in terms of its successive minima. We study the problem to generalize Minkowski's bound by replacing the volume by the lattice point enumerator of a convex body. In this context we are interested in bounds on the coefficients of Ehrhart polynomials of lattice polytopes via the successive minima. Our results for lattice zonotopes and lattice-face polytopes imply, in particular, that for 0-symmetric lattice-face polytopes and lattice parallelepipeds the volume can be replaced by the lattice point …
We describe a maximum entropy approach for computing volumes and counting integer points in polyhedra. To estimate the number of points from a particular set X in R^n in a polyhedron P in R^n, by solving a certain entropy maximization problem, we construct a probability distribution on the set X such that a) the probability mass function is constant on the intersection of P and X and b) the expectation of the distribution lies in P. This allows us to apply Central Limit Theorem type arguments to deduce computationally efficient approximations for the number of integer points, volumes, and the …
We prove the theorem mentioned in the title, for ${\mathbb{R}}^n$, where $n \ge 3$. The case of the simplex was known previously. Also, the case $n=2$ was settled, but there the infimum was some well-defined function of the side lengths. We also consider the cases of spherical and hyperbolic $n$-spaces. There we give some necessary conditions for the existence of a convex polytope with given facet areas, and some partial results about sufficient conditions for the existence of (convex) tetrahedra.
Let $K$ be a $d$ dimensional convex body with a twice continuously differentiable boundary and everywhere positive Gauss-Kronecker curvature. Denote by $K_n$ the convex hull of $n$ points chosen randomly and independently from $K$ according to the uniform distribution. Matching lower and upper bounds are obtained for the orders of magnitude of the variances of the $s$-th intrinsic volumes $V_s(K_n)$ of $K_n$ for $s\in\{1, ..., d\}$. Furthermore, strong laws of large numbers are proved for the intrinsic volumes of $K_n$. The essential tools are the Economic Cap Covering Theorem of Bárány and La…
Given a real closed polytope $P$, we first describe the Fourier transform of its indicator function by using iterations of Stokes' theorem. We then use the ensuing Fourier transform formulations, together with the Poisson summation formula, to give a new algorithm to count fractionally-weighted lattice points inside the one-parameter family of all real dilates of $P$. The combinatorics of the face poset of $P$ plays a central role in the description of the Fourier transform of $P$. We also obtain a closed form for the codimension-1 coefficient that appears in an expansion of this sum in powers…
Let $X_1,\ldots,X_N$, $N>n$, be independent random points in $\mathbb{R}^n$, distributed according to the so-called beta or beta-prime distribution, respectively. We establish threshold phenomena for the volume, intrinsic volumes, or more general measures of the convex hulls of these random point sets, as the space dimension $n$ tends to infinity. The dual setting of polytopes generated by random halfspaces is also investigated.
Let $P_1,\dots, P_n$ and $Q_1,\dots, Q_n$ be convex polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ such that $P_i\subset Q_i$. It is well-known that the mixed volume has the monotonicity property: $V(P_1,\dots,P_n)\leq V(Q_1,\dots,Q_n)$. We give two criteria for when this inequality is strict in terms of essential collections of faces as well as mixed polyhedral subdivisions. This geometric result allows us to characterize sparse polynomial systems with Newton polytopes $P_1,\dots,P_n$ whose number of isolated solutions equals the normalized volume of the convex hull of $P_1\cup\dots\cup P_n$. In addition, we ob…
We present a constructive proof of Alexandrov's theorem regarding the existence of a convex polytope with a given metric on the boundary. The polytope is obtained as a result of a certain deformation in the class of generalized convex polytopes with the given boundary. We study the space of generalized convex polytopes and discover a relation with the weighted Delaunay triangulations of polyhedral surfaces. The existence of the deformation follows from the non-degeneracy of the Hessian of the total scalar curvature of a positively curved generalized convex polytope. The latter is shown to be e…
We prove an asymptotic estimate for the number of mxn non-negative integer matrices (contingency tables) with prescribed row and column sums and, more generally, for the number of integer feasible flows in a network. Similarly, we estimate the volume of the polytope of mxn non-negative real matrices with prescribed row and column sums. Our estimates are solutions of convex optimization problems and hence can be computed efficiently. As a corollary, we show that if row sums R=(r_1, ..., r_m) and column sums C=(c_1, ..., c_n) with r_1 + ... + r_m =c_1 + ... +c_n =N are sufficiently far from cons…
The Colin de Verdière number $μ(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the maximum corank of a Colin de Verdière matrix for $G$ (that is, of a Schrödinger operator on $G$ with a single negative eigenvalue). In 2001, Lovász gave a construction that associated to every convex 3-polytope a Colin de Verdière matrix of corank 3 for its 1-skeleton. We generalize the Lovász construction to higher dimensions by interpreting it as minus the Hessian matrix of the volume of the polar dual. As a corollary, $μ(G) \ge d$ if $G$ is the 1-skeleton of a convex $d$-polytope. Determination of the signature of the Hessian of the …
We establish central limit theorems for natural volumes of random inscribed polytopes in projective Riemannian or Finsler geometries. In addition, normal approximation of dual volumes and the mean width of random polyhedral sets are obtained. We deduce these results by proving a general central limit theorem for the weighted volume of the convex hull of random points chosen from the boundary of a smooth convex body according to a positive and continuous density in Euclidean space. In the background are geometric estimates for weighted surface bodies and Berry-Esseen bounds for functionals of i…
We establish the log-concavity of the volume of central sections of dilations of the cross-polytope (the strong B-inequality for the cross-polytope and Lebesgue measure restricted to an arbitrary subspace).
We describe several experimental results obtained in four candidates social choice elections. These include the Condorcet and Borda paradoxes, as well as the Condorcet efficiency of plurality voting with runoff. The computations are done by Normaliz. It finds precise probabilities as volumes of polytopes and counting functions encoded as Ehrhart series of polytopes.
Let $K$ be a convex body in $\R^d$, let $j\in\{1, ..., d-1\}$, and let $\varrho$ be a positive and continuous probability density function with respect to the $(d-1)$-dimensional Hausdorff measure on the boundary $\partial K$ of $K$. Denote by $K_n$ the convex hull of $n$ points chosen randomly and independently from $\partial K$ according to the probability distribution determined by $\varrho$. For the case when $\partial K$ is a $C^2$ submanifold of $\R^d$ with everywhere positive Gauss curvature, M. Reitzner proved an asymptotic formula for the expectation of the difference of the $j$th int…
