The prime ideal structure of the Minkowski ring of polytopes (Q1196777)

The authors consider the additive group of functions generated by the characteristic function of the polytopes in a real finite-dimensional euclidean space. This group is provided with a ring structure by defining a multiplication defined by the equality \(c(P)\cdot c(Q)=c(P+Q)\), where \(P+Q\) is the Minkowski sum of \(P\) and \(Q\) and \(c(\cdot)\) stands for taking the characteristic function. The authors describe prime ideals of the resulting ring with the help of a valuation map. Some related questions on algebraic structure are addressed, too.