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 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.
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…
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 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 $2^{d-1}+2$.
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 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…
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…
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.
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…
What is the minimal closed cone containing all $f$-vectors of cubical $d$-polytopes? We construct cubical polytopes showing that this cone, expressed in the cubical $g$-vector coordinates, contains the nonnegative $g$-orthant, thus verifying one direction of the Cubical Generalized Lower Bound Conjecture of Babson, Billera and Chan. Our polytopes also show that a natural cubical analogue of the simplicial Generalized Lower Bound Theorem does not hold.
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 provide a number of new construction techniques for cubical complexes and cubical polytopes, and thus for cubifications (hexahedral mesh generation). As an application we obtain an instance of a cubical 4-polytope that has a non-orientable dual manifold (a Klein bottle). This confirms an existence conjecture of Hetyei (1995). More systematically, we prove that every normal crossing codimension one immersion of a compact 2-manifold into R^3 PL-equivalent to a dual manifold immersion of a cubical 4-polytope. As an instance we obtain a cubical 4-polytope with a cubation of Boy's surface as a d…
A cubical polytope is a polytope with all its facets being combinatorially equivalent to cubes. We deal with the connectivity of the graphs of cubical polytopes. We first establish that, for any $d\ge 3$, the graph of a cubical $d$-polytope with minimum degree $δ$ is $\min\{δ,2d-2\}$-connected. Second, we show, for any $d\ge 4$, that every minimum separator of cardinality at most $2d-3$ in such a graph consists of all the neighbours of some vertex and that removing the vertices of the separator from the graph leaves exactly two components, with one of them being the vertex itself.
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…
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…
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…
A cubical polytope is a polytope with all its facets being combinatorially equivalent to cubes. The paper is concerned with the linkedness of the graphs of cubical polytopes. A graph with at least $2k$ vertices is $k$-linked if, for every set of $2k$ distinct vertices organised in arbitrary $k$ pairs of vertices, there are $k$ vertex-disjoint paths joining the vertices in the pairs. Larman and Mani in 1970 proved that simplicial $d$-polytopes, polytopes with all their facets being combinatorially equivalent to simplices, are $\floor{(d+1)/2}$-linked; this is the maximum possible linkedness giv…
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…
Through tropical normal idempotent matrices, we introduce isocanted alcoved polytopes, computing their $f$--vectors and checking the validity of the following five conjectures: Bárány, unimodality, $3^d$, flag and cubical lower bound (CLBC). Isocanted alcoved polytopes are centrally symmetric, almost simple cubical polytopes. They are zonotopes. We show that, for each dimension, there is a unique combinatorial type. In dimension $d$, an isocanted alcoved polytope has $2^{d+1}-2$ vertices, its face lattice is the lattice of proper subsets of $[d+1]$ and its diameter is $d+1$. They are realizati…
We prove the following theorem, which is related to McMullen's problem on projective transformations of polytopes; let $2\leq k\leq \lfloor{\frac{d}{2}}\rfloor$ and $ν{(d, k)}$ be the largest number such that any set of $ν{(d,k)}$ points lying in general position in $\mathbb{R}^d$ can be mapped by a permissible projective transformation onto the vertices of a k-neighborly polytope, then $d + \left\lceil{\frac{d}{k}}\right\rceil +1 \leq ν{(d, k)} < 2d-k +1$.
We consider the realization space of the $d$-dimensional cube, and show that any two realizations are connected by a finite sequence of projective transformations and normal transformations. We use this fact to define an analog of the connected sum construction for cubical $d$-polytopes, and apply this construction to certain cubical $d$-polytopes to conclude that the rays spanned by $f$-vectors of cubical $d$-polytopes are dense in Adin's cone. The connectivity result on cubes extends to any product of simplices, and further, it shows the respective realization spaces are contractible.
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 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.
We prove that every primary basic semialgebraic set is homotopy equivalent to the set of inscribed realizations (up to Möbius transformation) of a polytope. If the semialgebraic set is moreover open, then, in addition, we prove that (up to homotopy) it is a retract of the realization space of some inscribed neighborly (and simplicial) polytope. We also show that all algebraic extensions of $\mathbb{Q}$ are needed to coordinatize inscribed polytopes. These statements show that inscribed polytopes exhibit the Mnëv universality phenomenon. Via stereographic projections, these theorems have a dire…
