Maximal triangulations of a regular prism (Q1826863)

Triangulations of a \(d\)-polytope \(P\) are of interest in many contexts; such a triangulation is regular if it arises as the projection of the lower surface of some simplicial \((d+1)\)-polytope. One also likes to know about triangulations with a minimum or maximum number of simplices; these numbers may not be invariants of the combinatorial type of a polytope. For example, \textit{J. A. De Loera, F. Santos} and \textit{F. Takeuchi} [SIAM J. Discrete Math. 14, No.~2, 143--161 (2001; Zbl 0983.52008)] showed that maximal triangulations of an \(n\)-gonal prism contain between \(\lceil(n^2+6n- 16)/4\rceil\) and \((n^2+n-6)/2\) tetrahedra. They exhibited a triangulation of a certain prism with the larger number, and conjectured that the archimedean prism (that is, with regular faces -- here called a regular prism) attained the smaller. This conjecture is proved in the present paper, as is the related conjecture by the same previous authors that the size of a maximal triangulation of an archimedean \(n\)-antiprism is \(\lfloor(n^2+8n-16)/4 \rfloor\). (Reviewer's comment: the abstract refers to regular triangulations for the latter result, although regularity is not mentioned in the statement or proof in the body of the paper.)