The objective of this paper is to present two types of results on Minkowski sums of convex polytopes. The first is about a special class of polytopes we call perfectly centered and the combinatorial properties of the Minkowski sum with their own dual. In particular, we have a characterization of face lattice of the sum in terms of the face lattice of a given perfectly centered polytope. Exact face counting formulas are then obtained for perfectly centered simplices and hypercubes. The second type of results concerns tight upper bounds for the f-vectors of Minkowski sums of several polytopes.
We provide a Minkowski sum decomposition of marked chain-order polytopes into building blocks associated to elementary markings and thus give an explicit minimal set of generators of an associated semi-group algebra. We proceed by characterizing the reflexive polytopes among marked chain-order polytopes as those with the underlying marked poset being ranked.
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…
The objective of this paper is to study a special family of Minkowski sums, that is of polytopes relatively in general position. We show that the maximum number of faces in the sum can be attained by this family. We present a new linear equation that is satisfied by f-vectors of the sum and the summands. We study some of the implications of this equation.
Gelfand-Tsetlin polytopes are classical objects in algebraic combinatorics arising in the representation theory of $\mathfrak{gl}_n(\mathbb{C})$. The integer point transform of the Gelfand-Tsetlin polytope $\mathrm{GT}(λ)$ projects to the Schur function $s_λ$. Schur functions form a distinguished basis of the ring of symmetric functions; they are also special cases of Schubert polynomials $\mathfrak{S}_{w}$ corresponding to Grassmannian permutations. For any permutation $w \in S_n$ with column-convex Rothe diagram, we construct a polytope $\mathcal{P}_{w}$ whose integer point transform project…
This note provides a Lefschetz theorem for Minkowski sums of polytopes, and conclude lower bound theorems for Minkowski sums of polytopes. It is written as an appendix to arXiv:1405.7368, so notation and references follow that paper.
In this paper, we consider the normality or the integer decomposition property (IDP, for short) for Minkowski sums of integral convex polytopes. We discuss some properties on the toric rings associated with Minkowski sums of integral convex polytopes. We also study Minkowski sums of edge polytopes and give a sufficient condition for Minkowski sums of edge polytopes to have IDP.
We analyze marked poset polytopes and generalize a result due to Hibi and Li, answering whether the marked chain polytope is unimodular equivalent to the marked order polytope. Both polytopes appear naturally in the representation theory of semi-simple Lie algebras, and hence we can give a necessary and sufficient condition on the marked poset such that the associated toric degenerations of the corresponding partial flag variety are isomorphic. We further show that the set of lattice points in such a marked poset polytope is the Minkowski sum of sets of lattice points for 0-1 polytopes. Moreov…
We investigate how the Minkowski sum of two polytopes affects their graph and, in particular, their diameter. We show that the diameter of the Minkowski sum is bounded below by the diameter of each summand and above by, roughly, the product between the diameter of one summand and the number of vertices of the other. We also prove that both bounds are sharp. In addition, we obtain a result on polytope decomposability. More precisely, given two polytopes P and Q, we show that P can be written as a Minkowski sum with a summand homothetic to Q if and only if P has the same number of vertices as it…
In this paper we use a generating function approach to record and calculate entries of the Minkowski tensors of a polytope. We focus on ''surface tensors'', extending the methods used in arXiv:1807.10258 for moments of the uniform distribution which correspond to volume tensors. In this context we also extend the definition of the adjoint polynomial to the boundary complex of a polytope with simplicial facets. In the case of simplicial polytopes we give an explicit formulation for these surface tensors.
For a polytope we define the {\em flag polynomial}, a polynomial in commuting variables related to the well-known flag vector and describe how to express the the flag polynomial of the Minkowski sum of $k$ standard simplices in a direct and canonical way in terms of the {\em $k$-th master polytope} $P(k)$ where $k\in\nats$. The flag polynomial facilitates many direct computations. To demonstrate this we provide two examples; we first derive a formula for the $f$-polynomial and the maximum number of $d$-dimensional faces of the Minkowski sum of two simplices. We then compute the maximum discrep…
We study the problem of covering R^d by overlapping translates of a convex body P, such that almost every point of R^d is covered exactly k times. Such a covering of Euclidean space by translations is called a k-tiling. The investigation of tilings (i.e. 1-tilings in this context) by translations began with the work of Fedorov and Minkowski. Here we extend the investigations of Minkowski to k-tilings by proving that if a convex body k-tiles R^d by translations, then it is centrally symmetric, and its facets are also centrally symmetric. These are the analogues of Minkowski's conditions for 1-t…
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-…
Given two tropical polynomials $f, g$ on $\mathbb{R}^n$, we provide a characterization for the existence of a factorization $f= h \odot g$ and the construction of $h$. As a ramification of this result we obtain a parallel result for the Minkowski factorization of polytopes. Using our construction we show that for any given polytopal fan there is a polytope factorization basis, i.e. a finite set of polytopes with respect to which any polytope whose normal fan is refined by the original fan can be uniquely written as a signed Minkowski sum. We explicitly study the factorization of polymatroids a…
We derive tight expressions for the maximum number of $k$-faces, $0\le k\le d-1$, of the Minkowski sum, $P_1+P_2+P_3$, of three $d$-dimensional convex polytopes $P_1$, $P_2$ and $P_3$, as a function of the number of vertices of the polytopes, for any $d\ge 2$. Expressing the Minkowski sum of the three polytopes as a section of their Cayley polytope $\mathcal{C}$, the problem of counting the number of $k$-faces of $P_1+P_2+P_3$, reduces to counting the number of $(k+2)$-faces of the subset of $\mathcal{C}$ comprising of the faces that contain at least one vertex from each $P_i$. In two dimensio…
The mixing operation for abstract polytopes gives a natural way to construct the minimal common cover of two polytopes. In this paper, we apply this construction to the regular convex polytopes, determining when the mix is again a polytope, and completely determining the structure of the mix in each case.
We investigate the structure of the Minkowski sum of standard simplices in ${\reals}^r$. In particular, we investigate the one-dimensional structure, the vertices, their degrees and the edges in the Minkowski sum polytope.
We derive tight expressions for the maximum number of $k$-faces, $0\le{}k\le{}d-1$, of the Minkowski sum, $P_1+...+P_r$, of $r$ convex $d$-polytopes $P_1,...,P_r$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$, where $d\ge{}2$ and $r<d$, as a (recursively defined) function on the number of vertices of the polytopes. Our results coincide with those recently proved by Adiprasito and Sanyal [2]. In contrast to Adiprasito and Sanyal's approach, which uses tools from Combinatorial Commutative Algebra, our approach is purely geometric and uses basic notions such as $f$- and $h$-vector calculus and shellings, and generalizes the…
The convex hulls of face-vertex incident vectors of 3-face-colorable convex polytopes are computed. It is found that every such convex hull is a $d$-polytope with $d+2$ or $d+3$ vertices. Utilizing Gale transform and Gale diagram, we calculate its combinatorial structure. Finally, a necessary and sufficient criterion for combinatorial equivalence of two such convex hulls is given.
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…
McMullen's g-vector is important for simple convex polytopes. This paper postulates axioms for its extension to general convex polytopes. It also conjectures that, for each dimension d, a stated finite calculation gives the formula for the extended g-vector. This calculation is done by computer for d=5 and the results analysed. The conjectures imply new linear inequalities on convex polytope flag vectors. Underlying the axioms is a hypothesised higher-order homology extension to middle perversity intersection homology (order-zero homology), which measures the failure of lower-order homology to…
Lattice polytopes which possess the integer decomposition property (IDP for short) turn up in many fields of mathematics. It is known that if the Cayley sum of lattice polytopes possesses IDP, then so does their Minkowski sum. In this paper, the Cayley sum of the order polytope of a finite poset and the stable set polytope of a finite simple graph is studied. We show that the Cayley sum of an order polytope and the stable set polytope of a perfect graph possesses a regular unimodular triangulation and IDP, and hence so does their Minkowski sum. Moreover, it turns out that, for an order polytop…
We consider unimodality and related properties of f-vectors of polytopes in various dimensions. By a result of Kalai (1988), f-vectors of 5-polytopes are unimodal. In higher dimensions much less can be said; we give an overview on current results and present a potentially interesting construction as well as a conjecture arising from this.
In these notes, we explain residue formulae for volumes of convex polytopes, and for Ehrahrt polynomials based on the notion of total residue. We apply this method to the computation of the volume of the Chan-Robbins polytope. The final computation is based on a total residue formula for the system $A_n$, similar to Morris identity. For flow polytopes, a formula of change of variables in total residues leads to a "nice formula" for Ehrhart polynomials in function of mixed volumes. We apply it to Pitman-Stanley polytope.
A $δ$-vector $δ(\Pc)= (δ_0, δ_1, ..., δ_d)$ is called shifted symmetric if $δ_{d-i} = δ_{i+1}$ for each $0 \leq i \leq [(d-1)/2]$. A natural family of $(0,1)$-polytopes with shifted symmetric $δ$-vectors will be studied.
Minkowski sums of simplices in ${\mathbb{R}}^n$ form an interesting class of polytopes that seem to emerge in various situations. In this paper we discuss the Minkowski sum of the simplices $Δ_{k-1}$ in ${\mathbb{R}}^n$ where $k$ and $n$ are fixed, their flags and some of their face lattice structure. In particular, we derive a closed formula for their {\em exponential generating flag function}. These polytopes are simple, include both the simplex $Δ_{n-1}$ and the permutahedron $Π_{n-1}$, and form a Minkowski basis for more general permutahedra.
For any given finite group, Schulte and Williams (2015) establish the existence of a convex polytope whose combinatorial automorphisms form a group isomorphic to the given group. We provide here a shorter proof for a stronger result: the convex polytope we build for the given finite group is binary, and even combinatorial in the sense of Naddef and Pulleyblank (1981); the diameter of its skeleton is at most 2; any combinatorial automorphism of the polytope is induced by some isometry of the space; any automorphism of the skeleton is a combinatorial automorphism.
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…
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…
We prove that each bounded polytope can be represented as a polynomial zonotope, which we refer to as the Z-representation of polytopes. Previous representations are the vertex representation (V-representation) and the halfspace representation (H-representation). Depending on the polytope, the Z-representation can be more compact than the V-representation and the H-representation. In addition, the Z-representation enables the computation of linear maps, Minkowski addition, and convex hull with a computational complexity that is polynomial in the representation size. The usefulness of the new r…
This paper offers a geometrical realisation of simple permutoassociahedra, which has significant importance serving as a topological proof of Mac Lane's coherence. We introduce a family of $n$-polytopes, $PA_{n,c}$, obtained by Minkowski sums such that each summand yields to the appropriate facet of the resulting sum. Additionally, it leads to the correlation between Minkowski sums and truncations of permutohedron, which implicitly gives a general procedure for geometrical Minkowski-construction of any permutonestohedron.
We show that lattice polytopes cut out by root systems of classical type are normal and Koszul, generalizing a well-known result of Bruns, Gubeladze, and Trung in type A. We prove similar results for Cayley sums of collections of polytopes whose Minkowski sums are cut out by root systems. The proofs are based on a combinatorial characterization of diagonally split toric varieties.
We introduce the M-representation of polytopes, which makes it possible to compute linear transformations, convex hulls, and Minkowski sums with linear complexity in the dimension of the polytopes. When the polytope is a convex hull of a zonotope and a polytope, the representation size can be smaller than any of the known representations (V-representation, H-representation, and Z-representation). We also provide a variant of the M-representation: The chain representation is more compact and we can directly use it to compute linear transformations and convex hulls -- for all other operations on…
This paper was submitted to the Oberwolfach Conference "Combinatorial Convexity and Algebraic Geometry", October 1997. Let $M={\mathbb Z}^r$. For convex lattice polytopes $P,P'$ in ${\mathbb R}^r$, when is $(M \cap P)+ (M \cap P') = M \cap (P + P')$? Without any additional condition, the equality obviously does not hold. When the pair $(M,P)$ corresponds to a complex projective toric variety $X$ and an ample divisor $D$ on $X$, it is reasonable to assume that $P'$ corresponds to an ample (or, more generally, a nef) divisor $D'$ on the same $X$. Then the question correspons to the surjectivity …
Given a Laurent polynomial f, one can form the period of f: this is a function of one complex variable that plays an important role in mirror symmetry for Fano manifolds. Mutations are a particular class of birational transformations acting on Laurent polynomials in two variables; they preserve the period and are closely connected with cluster algebras. We propose a higher-dimensional analog of mutation acting on Laurent polynomials f in n variables. In particular we give a combinatorial description of mutation acting on the Newton polytope P of f, and use this to establish many basic facts ab…
In this paper we prove that in type $\tt A_n$, the Feigin-Fourier-Littelmann-Vinberg (FFLV) polytope coincides with the Minkowski sum of Lusztig polytopes arising from various reduced decompositions. Using this result, we formulate a conjecture about the crystal structures on FFLV polytopes.
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 …
Any convex polytope whose combinatorial automorphism group has two orbits on the flags is isomorphic to one whose group of Euclidean symmetries has two orbits on the flags (equivalently, to one whose automorphism group and symmetry group coincide.) Hence, a combinatorially two-orbit convex polytope is isomorphic to one of a known finite list, all of which are 3-dimensional: the cuboctahedron, icosidodecahedron, rhombic dodecahedron, or rhombic triacontahedron. The same is true of combinatorially two-orbit normal face-to-face tilings by convex polytopes.
We present a much simplified proof of Dehn's theorem on the infinitesimal rigidity of convex polytopes. Our approach is based on the ideas of Trushkina and Schramm.
We describe the canonical correspondence between set of all finite metric spaces and set of special symmetric convex polytopes, and formulate the problem about classification of the metric spaces in terms of combinatorial structure of those polytopes.
We compute the Betti numbers of the geometric spaces associated to nonrational simple convex polytopes and find that they depend on the combinatorial type of the polytope exactly as in the rational case. This shows that the combinatorial features of the starting polytope are encoded in these generalized toric spaces as they are in their rational counterparts.
In this paper for any dimension n we give a complete list of lattice convex polytopes in R^n that are regular with respect to the group of affine transformations preserving the lattice.
The aim of this article is to show the existence, and also give an explicit construction, of infinite sets of orthogonal exponentials for certain families of convex polytopes which include simple-rational polytopes and also non simple polytopes which satisfy other nontrivial conditions. We also show that by considering weight functions one can construct infinite sets of orthogonal exponentials with a positive density by considering orthogonal projections of affine transformations of hypercubes (i.e., zonotopes).
We study finite groups that occur as combinatorial automorphism groups or geometric symmetry groups of convex polytopes. When $Γ$ is a subgroup of the combinatorial automorphism group of a convex $d$-polytope, $d\geq 3$, then there exists a convex $d$-polytope related to the original polytope with combinatorial automorphism group exactly $Γ$. When $Γ$ is a subgroup of the geometric symmetry group of a convex $d$-polytope, $d\geq 3$, then there exists a convex $d$-polytope related to the original polytope with both geometric symmetry group and combinatorial automorphism group exactly $Γ$. These…
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.
Let $K$ be a smooth convex set with volume one in $\BBR^d$. Choose $n$ random points in $K$ independently according to the uniform distribution. The convex hull of these points, denoted by $K_n$, is called a {\it random polytope}. We prove that several key functionals of $K_n$ satisfy the central limit theorem as $n$ tends to infinity.
The Möbius polynomial is an invariant of ranked posets, closely related to the Möbius function. In this paper, we study the Möbius polynomial of face posets of convex polytopes. We present formulas for computing the Möbius polynomial of the face poset of a pyramid or a prism over an existing polytope, or of the gluing of two or more polytopes in terms of the Möbius polynomials of the original polytopes. We also present general formulas for calculating Möbius polynomials of face posets of simplicial polytopes and of Eulerian posets in terms of their $f$-vectors and some additional constraints.
We define an extension of the toric (middle perversity intersection homology) $g$-vector of a convex polytope $X$. The extended $g(X)$ encodes the whole of the flag vector $f(X)$ of $X$, and so is called complete. We find that for many examples that $g_k(X)\geq 0$ for most $k$ (independent of $X$).
Cutting a polytope is a very natural way to produce new classes of interesting polytopes. Moreover, it has been very enlightening to explore which algebraic and combinatorial properties of the orignial polytope are hereditary to its subpolytopes obtained by a cut. In this work, we put our attention to all the seperating hyperplanes for some given polytope (integral and convex) and study the existence and classification of such hyperplanes. We prove the exitence of seperating hyperplanes for the order and chain polytopes for any finite posets that are not a single chain; prove there are no such…
