Intersection homology of toric varieties and a conjecture of Kalai (Q1125561)

The authors prove an inequality, conjectured by \textit{G. Kalai} [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 49, No. 2, 191-209 (1988; Zbl 0691.05006)], relating the \(g\)-polynomials of a polytope \(P\), a face \(F\), and the quotient polytope \(P/F\), in the case where \(P\) is rational. Namely, it is shown that \(g(P) \geq g(F)g(P/F)\) holds, coefficient by coefficient. The polynomial \(g(P)\) is defined via the intersection homology of a toric variety associated with \(P\) and depends only on the face lattice of \(P\). It can be thought of as a measure of the complexity of \(P\); for example \(g(P)=1\) if and only if \(P\) is a simplex. Roughly, the above inequality means that the complexity of \(P\) is bounded from below by the complexity of the face \(F\) and the normal complexity \(g(P/F)\) to the face \(F\) (faces of \(P/F\) are in one-to-one correspondence with faces of \(P\) wich contain \(F\)). The principal idea is to introduce a relative \(g\)-polynomial \(g(P,F)\), which measures the complexity of the part of \(P\) ``far away'' from the face \(F\); Kalai's conjecture follows from the non-negativity of these polynomials. This nonnegativity comes from showing that the restriction of the intersection cohomology sheaf on a toric variety to the closure of an orbit is a direct sum of intersection homology sheaves.