Lower bound theorems for general polytopes (Q2422227)

In order to study a Grünbaum's conjecture (see [\textit{B. Grünbaum}, Convex polytopes. Prepared by Volker Kaibel, Victor Klee, and Günter M. Ziegler. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Springer (2003; Zbl 1033.52001)]), the authors focus on the determination of the minimum number of \(m\)-dimensional faces of a polytope, given the number of its vertices. We consider the set \[ E(v,d)=\{e : \text{there is a \(d\)-polytope with \(v\) vertices and \(e\) edges}\} \] and let \[ \phi (v,d)=\binom{d+1}{2}+\binom{d}{2}-\binom{2d+1-v}{2}. \] Grünbaum conjectured that \[ \phi (v,d)=\min E(v,d) \] and he proved this for \(d<v\leq d+4\). In their main results, the authors compute the number \(\min E(v,d)\) in terms of the function \(\phi (v,d)\) and they are able to confirm the conjecture in the case that \(d<v\leq 2d\). More precisely, let \(P\) be a \(d\)-polytope with \(d+k\) vertices. In their first main result, for the case that \(0\leq k\leq d\), they prove that \(P\) has at least \(\phi (k+d,d)\) edges with the equality holds if and only if the polytope \(P\) is the \((d-k)\)-fold pyramid over the \(k\)-dimensional prism. In the case that \(k=d+1\) they prove that \(\min E(v,d)=d^2+d-1\), for all \(d\) except the case that \(d=4.\) In each case they also give a characterization of the minimising polytopes. Based on the above results, they evaluated the \(\min E(v,d)\) for \(v\leq 2d+1\). Since upper bounds for the \(E(v,d)\) are known, in the rest of the paper the authors study the internal values of the \(E(v,d)\). They are able to prove that there are a lot of gaps in the internal values between \(\min E(v,d)\) and \(\max E(v,d)\).