Projective geometry of Wachspress coordinates (Q2216249)

In the paper under review, the authors study the geometry of polytopes from a viewpoint of Wachspress varieties. Let us start with the following definitions. Let \(P\) be a polytope in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\), then we consider it as a subset of \(\mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}\) by taking the Zariski closure of the faces of \(P\). If the polytope \(P \subset \mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}\) is full dimensional, the union of these projective subspaces is a hyperplane arrangement \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\). We also denote by \(\mathcal{R}_{P}\) the residual arrangement of \(P\), it consists of all linear spaces that are intersections of hyperplanes in \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\) and do not contain any face of \(P\). Let us consider the following example. If \(P\) is a polygon in the plane with \(d\) edges, then the residual arrangement \(\mathcal{R}_{P}\) consists of \(\binom{d}{2}-d\) points. These are exactly the intersection points of the extended edges outside of the polygon \(P\). The main result of the paper under review can be formulated as follows. Theorem A. Let \(P\) be a full-dimensional polytope \(P\) with \(d\) facets. If the hyperplane arrangement \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\) is simple (which means that through any point in \(\mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}\) pass at most \(n\) hyperplanes in \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\)), there is a unique hypersurface \(A_{P}\) of degree \(d-n-1\) which vanishes along the residual arrangement \(\mathcal{R}_{P}\). If \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\) is simple, we say that \(A_{P}\) is the adjoint of the polytope \(P\). In other words, for a polytope \(P\) with simple hyperplane arrangement \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\), the ideal sheaf \(\mathcal{I}_{\mathcal{R}_{P}}\) of the residual arrangement twisted by \(d-n-1\) has a unique global section up to scaling with constant, i.e., \[h^{0}(\mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}, \mathcal{I}_{\mathcal{R}_{P}}(d-n-1))=1.\] The idea of the adjoint \(A_{P}\) introduced by the authors coincide, in the case when \(P\) is a polygon in the plane, with the so-called Wachspress adjoint curve. Such a curve is defined as the minimal degree curve passing through the intersection points of pairs of lines containing non-adjacent edges of the polygon. In addition, Warren defined the adjoint polynomial for any convex polytope \(P \subset \mathbb{R}^{n}\) as follows. Fix a triangulation \(\tau(P)\) of \(P\) into simplices such that the vertices of each occuring simplex \(\sigma\) are vertices of \(P\) and then one defines the adjoint to be the polynomial: \[\mathrm{adj}_{\tau(P)}(t) := \sum_{\sigma \in \tau(P)} \mathrm{vol}(\sigma) \prod_{v \in V(P) \setminus V(\sigma)} \ell_{v}(t),\] where \(t = (t_{1}, t_{2}, \dots, t_{n})\), the set of vertices of a polytope is defined by \(V(\cdot)\), and \(\ell_{v}(t)\) denotes the linear form \(1-v_{1}t_{1} - \dots - v_{n}t_{n}\) associated with \(v\). One can show that the adjoint does not depend on the choice of triangulations. Moreover, Warren's adjoint \(\mathrm{adj}_{P}\) of a polygon \(P\) coincides with Wachspress' adjoint of the dual polygon \(P^{*}\). Finally, let us recall the notion of the Wachspress coordinates of a polytope \(P\), namely \[\forall u \in V(P) : \quad \beta_{u}(t):= \frac{ \mathrm{adj}_{F_{u}}(t) \cdot \prod_{F \in \mathcal{F}(P)\, : \, u \not\in F}\ell_{v_{F}}(t)}{\mathrm{adj}_{P^{*}}(t)},\] where \(\mathcal{F}(P)\) denotes the set of facets of \(P\), \(F_{v}\) denotes the facet of the dual polytope \(P^{*}\) that corresponds to the vertex \(v \in V(P)\), and \(v_{F}\) denotes the vertex of the dual polytope \(P^{*}\) corresponding to the facet \(F \in \mathcal{F}(P)\). Using this notion one can define a rational map \(\omega_{P} : \mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}} \dashrightarrow \mathbb{P}^{N-1}_{\mathbb{C}}\) \[t \mapsto \bigg( \prod_{F \in \mathcal{F}(P) \, : \, u \not\in F} \ell_{F}(t)\bigg)_{u \in V(P)},\] where \(N\) denotes the number of vertices of \(P\) and \(\ell_{F}\) is a homogeneous linear equation defining the projective closure of the hyperplane spanned by the facet \(F\). We say that \(\omega_{P}\) is the Wachspress map of a simpe polytope \(P\) and call the coordinates of \(\omega_{P}\) enumerated by the vertices \(u \in V(P)\) the Wachspress coordinates. Theorem B. For a full-dimensional polytope \(P\) in \(\mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}\) with a simple hyperplane arrangement \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\) the base locus of the Wachpress map \(\omega_{P}\) is the residual arrangement \(\mathcal{R}_{P}\). Define \[\Omega_{P} := H^{0}(\mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}, \mathcal{I}_{\mathcal{R}_{P}}(d-n)).\] Theorem C. For a full-dimensional polytope \(P\) in \(\mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}\) with a simple hyperplane arrangement \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\), the dimension of \(\Omega_{P}\) equals to the number of the vertices of \(P\). Theorem D. Let \(P\) be a full-dimensional polytope in \(\mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}\) with \(N\) vertices and a simple hyperplane arrangement \(\mathcal{H}_{P}\). The dimension of \(\mathbb{V}_{P} = \mathrm{span} \{ \omega_{P}(A_{p})\} \subset \mathbb{P}(\Omega_{P}^{*})\) is \(N-n-2\). The projection \(\rho_{P}: \mathbb{P}(\Omega_{P}^{*}) \dashrightarrow \mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}}\) from \(\mathbb{V}_{P}\) restricted to the Wachspress variety \(W_{p}:=\overline{\omega_{P}(\mathbb{P}^{n}_{\mathbb{C}})}\) is the inverse of the Wachspress map \(\omega_{P}\).