Pruned inside-out polytopes, combinatorial reciprocity theorems and generalized permutahedra (Q2112572)

Summary: Generalized permutahedra are a class of polytopes with many interesting combinatorial subclasses. We introduce pruned inside-out polytopes, a generalization of inside-out polytopes introduced by \textit{M. Beck} and \textit{T. Zaslavsky} [Adv. Math. 205, No. 1, 134--162 (2006; Zbl 1107.52009)], which have many applications such as recovering the famous reciprocity result for graph colorings by Stanley. We show (quasi-)polynomiality and reciprocity results for the integer point count of pruned inside-out polytopes by applying classical Ehrhart polynomials and Ehrhart-Macdonald reciprocity. This yields a geometric perspective on and a generalization of a combinatorial reciprocity theorem for generalized permutahedra by \textit{M. Aguiar} and \textit{F. Ardila} [``Hopf monoids and generalized permutahedra'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1709.07504}], \textit{L. J. Billera} et al. [Eur. J. Comb. 30, No. 8, 1727--1757 (2009; Zbl 1179.05025)] and \textit{T. Karaboghossian} [``Combinatorial expressions of Hopf polynomial invariants'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2203.03947}]. Applying this reciprocity theorem to hypergraphic polytopes allows to give a geometric proof of a combinatorial reciprocity theorem for hypergraph colorings by \textit{J.-C. Aval} et al. [Electron. J. Comb. 27, No. 1, Research Paper P1.34, 23 p. (2020; Zbl 1434.05100)]. This proof relies, aside from the reciprocity for generalized permutahedra, only on elementary geometric and combinatorial properties of hypergraphs and their associated polytopes.