Minkowski length of 3D lattice polytopes (Q1930539)

The Minkowski length \(L(P)\) of a lattice polytope \(P\) is the largest number of non-trivial primitive segments whose Minkowski sum lies in \(P\). In this paper the authors give a polytime algorithm to compute \(L(P)\) in three-dimensional case. Further they study the three-dimensional polytopes with small Minkowski length. In particular, it is shown that if \(Q\), a subpolytope of \(P\), is the Minkowski sum of \(L=L(P)\) lattice polytopes \(Q_i\), each of Minkowski length 1, then the total number of interior points of all the summands \(Q_1,\dots, Q_L\) is at most 4. The methods of the work differ substantially from those used in the two-dimensional case. General remark: 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 minimal distance of toric codes.