Finitely many smooth \(d\)-polytopes with \(n\) lattice points (Q2351749)

The purpose of this paper is to prove several finiteness results which can be stated in terms of both toric geometry and of polyhedral geometry, providing equivalent results in the two worlds. This work is motivated by several long-standing open questions concerning the algebraic geometry of toric varieties. The main finiteness result of the paper is that for \(n\) a nonnegative integer, there exist only finitely many embeddings of \(Q\)-factorial (normal) toric varieties into \(\mathbb{P}^n\) that are induced by a complete linear series. In polyhedral geometry parlance, this is equivalent to: for fixed \(n\), there exist only finitely many simple and very ample polytopes with \(n\) lattice points. Moreover, for the particular case that the toric variety \(X\) is smooth, they prove a stronger result. For an ample line bundle \(L = \mathcal{O}(D)\) on \(X\), we set \(d(L) := \sum D \cdot C\), where the sum runs over all torus invariant curves \(C\) in \(X\). For fixed \(n\), there are only finitely many smooth polarized toric varieties \((X,L)\) such that \(d(L) \leq n\). This result can be restated as: for fixed \(n\) and modulo integral equivalence, there are only finitely many smooth lattice polytopes with \(n\) lattice points on their edges. As a direct consequence of this, the authors derive that: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize} \item[(1)] for smooth lattice polytopes, bounding the number of lattice points on the edges bounds the number of total lattice points, and that \item [(2)] for fixed \(m\) and \(n\), there are only finitely many lattice polytopes with \(Q\)-Gorenstein normal cones of multiplicity \(\leq m\) and with \(n\) lattice points on edges. \end{itemize}} The results are proved by a thorough study of the dimension \(2\) case and using a ``trick'' that transfers finiteness from dimension \(2\) to any dimension \(n\). In the last section, the authors provide explicitly: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize} \item[(1)] the \(41\) equivalence classes of smooth lattice polygons with at most \(12\) lattice points, and \item [(2)] the \(33\) equivalence classes of smooth \(3\)-dimensional lattice polytopes with at most \(12\) lattice points. \end{itemize}} They use this second family as a test bed for several conjectures concerning embeddings of smooth projective toric varieties which are open even in dimension \(3\). These conjectures go from the weakest stating that every smooth lattice polytope is integrally closed to the strongest that states that the corresponding ideal has an initial ideal generated by square-free monomials. It turns out that smooth \(3\)-dimensional lattice polytopes with at most \(12\) lattice points satisfy all these conjectures. The paper is very well written, it nicely explains the intuition behind the proofs and includes many interesting examples showing that the conditions in most results cannot be omitted in the statement.