Existence of regular unimodular triangulations of dilated empty simplices (Q1746592)

A (convex) polytope \(P \subseteq \mathbb{R}^d\) is lattice if its vertices are lattice points, that is, elements of \(\mathbb{Z}^d\). Call \(P\) a simplex if it has \(\text{dim } P + 1\) vertices, and empty if its only lattice points are its vertices. The article under review considers empty lattice simplices for their connections to Ehrhart theory and toric varieties. The authors are particularly interested in determining when such simplices have the integer decomposition property (IDP) and when scalings have regular, unimodular triangulations. The main result of the article concerns empty lattice simplices \(P \subseteq \mathbb{R}^{2k-1}\) with \(\delta\)-polynomial \(1 + (m-1)t^k\) for some \(k,m \geq 2\). In this instance, the existence of a regular unimodular triangulation of \(kP\) is equivalent to showing that \(P\) is unimodularly equivalent to one specific simplex in \(\mathbb{R}^{2k-1}\) whose vertices are explicitly provided. One implication of this is that for each \(k \geq 2\), there exists an empty \((2k-1)\)-dimensional simplex \(P\) such that \(kP\) is IDP but has no regular, unimodular triangulation. Techniques from toric algebra play a prominent role in the proofs of these results, as there is a close relationship between triangulations of polytopes and initial ideals of related toric ideals.