The degree partition of a simple graph is its degree sequence rearranged in weakly decreasing order. The polytope of degree partitions (respectively, degree sequences) is the convex hull of all degree partitions (respectively, degree sequences) of a fixed length. We think of the degree sequence polytope as the symmetrization of the degree partition polytope and the degree partition polytope as the asymmetric part of the degree sequence polytope. The degree sequence polytope is a well studied object with formulas (generating functions) known for its face numbers, volume, and number of lattice points. We study the degree partition polytope and determine its extreme points, edges, and facets. In particular, the degree partition polytope on n vertices has 2^{n-1} extreme points.
In this paper, we provide three different ways to partition the polytope of doubly substochastic matrices into subpolytopes via the prescribed row and column sums, the sum of all elements and the sub-defect respectively. Then we characterize the extreme points of each type of convex subpolytopes. The relations of the extreme points of the subpolytopes in the three partitions are also given.
We study a correspondence between numerical sets and integer partitions that leads to a bijection between simultaneous core partitions and the integer points of a certain polytope. We use this correspondence to prove combinatorial results about core partitions. For small values of a, we give formulas for the number of (a,b)-core partitions corresponding to numerical semigroups. We also study the number of partitions with a given hook set.
Given a finite set of vectors spanning a lattice and lying in a halfspace of a real vector space, to each vector $a$ in this vector space one can associate a polytope consisting of nonnegative linear combinations of the vectors in the set which sum up to $a$. This polytope is called the partition polytope of $a$. If $a$ is integral, this polytope contains a finite set of lattice points corresponding to nonnegative integral linear combinations. The partition polytope associated to an integral $a$ is a rational convex polytope, and any rational convex polytope can be realized canonically as a pa…
We establish the relationship between volumes of flow polytopes associated to signed graphs and the Kostant partition function. A special case of this relationship, namely, when the graphs are signless, has been studied in detail by Baldoni and Vergne using techniques of residues. In contrast with their approach, we provide entirely combinatorial proofs inspired by the work of Postnikov and Stanley on flow polytopes. As a fascinating special family of flow polytopes, we study the Chan-Robbins-Yuen polytopes. Motivated by the beautiful volume formula $\prod_{k=1}^{n-2} Cat(k)$ for the type $A_n…
We consider the {\em Shaped Partition Problem} of partitioning $n$ given vectors in real $k$-space into $p$ parts so as to maximize an arbitrary objective function which is convex on the sum of vectors in each part, subject to arbitrary constraints on the number of elements in each part. In addressing this problem, we study the {\em Shaped Partition Polytope} defined as the convex hull of solutions. The Shaped Partition Problem captures ${\cal N}{\cal P}$-hard problems such as the Max-Cut problem and the Traveling Salesperson problem, and the Shaped Partition Polytope may have exponentially ma…
Recent progress on flow polytopes indicates many interesting families with product formulas for their volume. These product formulas are all proved using analytic techniques. Our work breaks from this pattern. We define a family of closely related flow polytopes $\mathcal{F}_{(λ, {\bf a})}$ for each partition shape $λ$ and netflow vector ${\bf a}\in \mathbb{Z}^n_{> 0}$. In each such family, we prove that there is a polytope (the limiting one in a sense) which is a product of scaled simplices, explaining their product volumes. We also show that the combinatorial type of all polytopes in a fixed…
The polytope of integer partitions of $n$ is the convex hull of the corresponding $n$-dimensional integer points. Its vertices are of importance because every partition is their convex combination. Computation shows intriguing features of $v(n),$ the number of the polytope vertices: its graph has a saw-toothed shape with the highest peaks at prime $n$'s. We explain the shape of $v(n)$ by the large number of partitions of even $n$'s that were counted by N. Metropolis and P. R. Stein. These partitions are convex combinations of two others. We reveal that divisibility of $n$ by 3 also reduces the…
This paper presents an algorithm to compute the value of the inverse Laplace transforms of rational functions with poles on arrangements of hyperplanes. As an application, we present an efficient computation of the partition function for classical root systems.
The Baldoni--Vergne volume and Ehrhart polynomial formulas for flow polytopes are significant in at least two ways. On one hand, these formulas are in terms of Kostant partition functions, connecting flow polytopes to this classical vector partition function fundamental in representation theory. On the other hand the Ehrhart polynomials can be read off from the volume functions of flow polytopes. The latter is remarkable since the leading term of the Ehrhart polynomial of an integer polytope is its volume! Baldoni and Vergne proved these formulas via residues. To reveal the geometry of these f…
We present a constructive proof, that there exists a decomposition of the 2-skeleton of the k-dimensional cross polytope β^k into closed surfaces of genus \leq 1, each with a transitive automorphism group given by the vertex transitive Z_{2k}-action on β^k. Furthermore we show, that for each k \equiv 1,5(6) the 2-skeleton of the (k-1)-simplex is a union of highly symmetric tori and Möbius strips.
A theorem of Scott gives an upper bound for the normalized volume of lattice polygons with exactly $i>0$ interior lattice points. We will show that the same bound is true for the normalized volume of lattice polytopes of degree 2 even in higher dimensions. In particular, there is only a finite number of quadratic polynomials with fixed leading coefficient being the $h^*$-polynomial of a lattice polytope.
The degree of a lattice polytope is a notion in Ehrhart theory that was studied quite intensively over the previous years. It is well-known that a lattice polytope has normalized volume one if and only if its degree is zero. Recently, Esterov and Gusev gave a complete classification result of families of $n$ lattice polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^n$ whose mixed volume equals one. Here, we give a reformulation of their result involving the novel notion of a mixed degree that generalizes the degree similar to how the mixed volume generalizes the volume. We discuss and motivate this terminology, and ex…
The h^*-polynomial of a lattice polytope is the numerator of the generating function of the Ehrhart polynomial. Let P be a lattice polytope with h^*-polynomial of degree d and with linear coefficient h^*_1. We show that P has to be a lattice pyramid over a lower-dimensional lattice polytope, if the dimension of P is greater or equal to h^*_1 (2d+1) + 4d-1. This result has a purely combinatorial proof and generalizes a recent theorem of Batyrev.
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. …
The convex hull of the set of the incidence vectors of the matchings of a graph G is the matching polytope of the graph, M(G). The graph whose vertices and edges are the vertices and edges of M(G) is the skeleton of the matching polytope of G, denoted G(M(G)). Since the number of vertices of G(M(G)) is huge, the structural properties of these graphs have been studied in particular classes. In this paper, for an arbitrary graph G, we obtain a formulae to compute the degree of a vertex of G(M(G)) and prove that the minimum degree of G(M(G)) is equal to the number of edges of G. Also, we identify…
We introduce fractional realizations of a graph degree sequence and a closely associated convex polytope. Simple graph realizations correspond to a subset of the vertices of this polytope. We describe properties of the polytope vertices and characterize degree sequences for which each polytope vertex corresponds to a simple graph realization. These include the degree sequences of pseudo-split graphs, and we characterize their realizations both in terms of forbidden subgraphs and graph structure.
We completely characterize the first two entries, namely the $(f_0, f_1)$-vector pairs, for $6$-dimension polytopes. We also find the characterization for $7$-dimension polytopes with excess degree greater than $11$ and, we conjecture bounds fulfilled by $(f_0, f_1)$-vector pairs for any $d$-polytope having an excess degree greater than $3d-10$.
We study a family of dissections of flow polytopes arising from the subdivision algebra. To each dissection of a flow polytope, we associate a polynomial, called the left-degree polynomial, which we show is invariant of the dissection considered (proven independently by Grinberg). We prove that left-degree polynomials encode integer points of generalized permutahedra. Using that certain left-degree polynomials are related to Grothendieck polynomials, we resolve special cases of conjectures by Monical, Tokcan, and Yong regarding the saturated Newton polytope property of Grothendieck polynomials…
Reflexive polytopes have been studied from viewpoints of combinatorics, commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. A nef-partition of a reflexive polytope $\mathcal{P}$ is a decomposition $\mathcal{P}=\mathcal{P}_1+\cdots+\mathcal{P}_r$ such that each $\mathcal{P}_i$ is a lattice polytope containing the origin. Batyrev and van Straten gave a combinatorial method for explicit constructions of mirror pairs of Calabi-Yau complete intersections obtained from nef-partitions. In the present paper, by means of Gröbner basis techniques, we give a large family of nef-partitions arising from unimodular…
Brightwell, van den Heuvel and Stougie proved that the diameter of an $m \times n$ transportation polytope is at most $8(m+n-2)$, a factor of eight away from the Hirsch Conjecture. This bound was improved to $3(m+n-1)$ by Hurkens. We investigate diameters for certain classes of transportation polytopes. Note: After the completion of this note, we discovered that the class of transportation polytopes studied in this note was already considered in Michel L. Balinski. On two special classes of transportation polytopes. Math. Programming Stud., 1:43-58, 1974. Michel L. Balinski and Fred J. Rispoli…
A $d$-dimensional lattice polytope $P$ is Gorenstein if it has a multiple $r P$ that is a reflexive polytope up to translation by a lattice vector. The difference $d+1-r$ is called the degree of $P$. We show that a Gorenstein polytope is a lattice pyramid if its dimension is at least three times its degree. This was previously conjectured by Batyrev and Juny. We also present a refined conjecture and prove it for IDP Gorenstein polytopes.
It has been shown by Soprunov that the normalized mixed volume (minus one) of an $n$-tuple of $n$-dimensional lattice polytopes is a lower bound for the number of interior lattice points in the Minkowski sum of the polytopes. He defined $n$-tuples of mixed degree at most one to be exactly those for which this lower bound is attained with equality, and posed the problem of a classification of such tuples. We give a finiteness result regarding this problem in general dimension $n \geq 4$, showing that all but finitely many $n$-tuples of mixed degree at most one admit a common lattice projection …
Let $F$ be a planar, $3$-connected graph of radius one on $p$ vertices, with $a$ vertices of degree three. We characterise all unigraphic degree sequences for such graphs, when $a\geq 3$ and $p$ is large enough with respect to $a$. This complements the work of \cite{mafpo4} for $a\leq 3$.
Results of Koebe (1936), Schramm (1992), and Springborn (2005) yield realizations of $3$-polytopes with edges tangent to the unit sphere. Here we study the algebraic degrees of such realizations. This initiates the research on constrained realization spaces of polytopes.
We ask which degree sequences admit a unique realisation as a $3$-polytopal graph (polyhedron) on $p$ vertices. We give an exhaustive list of these sequences for the case where one degree equals $p-1$ and exactly two or three of them equal $3$. We also find all $3$-polytopes of radius one with $p\leq 17$, and those with $q\leq 41$ edges, by developing a fast algorithm and making use of High Performance Computing.
Given a crystallographic reduced root system and an element v of the lattice generated by the roots we study the minimum number |v|, called the length of v, of roots needed to express v as sum of roots. This number is related to the linear functionals presenting the convex hull of the roots; the map v --> |v| turns out to be piecewise quasi-linear with quasi-linearity domains the cones over the facets of this convex hull. In order to show this relation we investigate the integral closure of the monoid generated by the roots in a facet. We study also the positive lenght, i.e. the minimum number…
We construct a sequence of subset partition graphs satisfying the dimension reduction, adjacency, strong adjacency, and endpoint count properties whose diameter has a superlinear asymptotic lower bound. These abstractions of polytope graphs give further evidence against the Linear Hirsch Conjecture.
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…
We present a formula for the degree of the discriminant of a smooth projective toric variety associated to a lattice polytope P, in terms of the number of integral points in the interior of dilates of faces of dimension greater or equal than $\lceil \frac {\dim P} 2 \rceil$.
We introduce the Tesler polytope Tes_n(a_1,a_2,...,a_n), whose integer points are the Tesler matrices of size n with nonnegative integer hook sums a_1,a_2,...,a_n. We show that Tes_n(a) is a flow polytope and therefore the number of Tesler matrices is counted by the type A_n Kostant partition function evaluated at (a_1,a_2,...,a_n,-a_1-...-a_n). We describe the faces of this polytope in terms of "Tesler tableaux" and characterize when the polytope is simple. We prove that the h-vector of Tes_n(a) when all a_i>0 is given by the Mahonian numbers and calculate the volume of Tes_n(1,1,...,1) to be…
Let $X$ be a configuration of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$. What is the maximum number of vertices that $conv(T(X))$ can have among all the possible permissible projective transformations $T$? In this paper, we investigate this and connected questions. After presenting several upper bounds, we study a closely related problem (via Gale transforms) concerning the number of minimal Radon partitions of a set of points. We then present some bounds for this number that enable us to partially answer a question due to Pach and Szegedy. We also discuss another related problem concerning the size of top…
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…
A referee found an error in the proof of the Main Theorem ("toric ideals of flow polytopes are generated in degree 3") that we could not fix. More precisely, the proof of Lemma 4.2.(ii) is incorrect. The results on Gröbner bases are untouched by this. ----- We show that toric ideals of flow polytopes are generated in degree 3. This was conjectured by Diaconis and Eriksson for the special case of the Birkhoff polytope. Our proof uses a hyperplane subdivision method developed by Haase and Paffenholz. It is known that reduced revlex Gröbner bases of the toric ideal of the Birkhoff polytope $B_n$ …
We study polytopes defined by inequalities of the form $\sum_{i\in I} z_{i}\leq 1$ for $I\subseteq [d]$ and nonnegative $z_i$ where the inequalities can be reordered into a matrix inequality involving a column-convex $\{0,1\}$-matrix. These generalize polytopes studied by Stanley, and the consecutive coordinate polytopes of Ayyer, Josuat-Vergès, and Ramassamy. We prove an integral equivalence between these polytopes and flow polytopes of directed acyclic graphs $G$ with a Hamiltonian path, which we call spinal graphs. We show that the volume of these flow polytopes is the number of extensions …
It is well known that the set of possible degree sequences for a graph on $n$ vertices is the intersection of a lattice and a convex polytope. We show that the set of possible degree sequences for a $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices is not the intersection of a lattice and a convex polytope for $k \geq 3$ and $n \geq k+13$. We also show an analogous nonconvexity result for the set of degree sequences of $k$-partite $k$-uniform hypergraphs and the generalized notion of $λ$-balanced $k$-uniform hypergraphs.
A bidirectional ballot sequence (BBS) is a finite binary sequence with the property that every prefix and suffix contains strictly more ones than zeros. BBS's were introduced by Zhao, and independently by Bosquet-M{é}lou and Ponty as $(1,1)$-culminating paths. Both sets of authors noted the difficulty in counting these objects, and to date research on bidirectional ballot sequences has been concerned with asymptotics. We introduce a continuous analogue of bidirectional ballot sequences which we call bidirectional gerrymanders, and show that the set of bidirectional gerrymanders form a convex p…
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…
Let $P$ be an arbitrary finite partially ordered set. It will be proved that the number of edges of the order polytope ${\mathcal O}(P)$ is equal to that of the chain polytope ${\mathcal C}(P)$. Furthermore, it will be shown that the degree sequence of the finite simple graph which is the $1$-skeleton of ${\mathcal O}(P)$ is equal to that of ${\mathcal C}(P)$ if and only if ${\mathcal O}(P)$ and ${\mathcal C}(P)$ are unimodularly equivalent.
