Integer point enumeration on independence polytopes and half-open hypersimplices (Q2032870)

Each polytope, whose vertices all have integer Cartesian coordinates, is associated with an Ehrhart polynomial that encodes the relationship between the volume of a polytope and the number of integer points. In particular, the leading coefficient is the volume of the polytope. Therefore, it is interesting to know for polytopes how their Ehrhart polynomial looks like. In this paper, the author studies the independence polytope of matroids and he proves that these polytopes have Ehrhart polynomials with positive coefficients. To get this result, he uses half-open-hypersimplices -- they have also Ehrhart polynomials with positive coefficients -- to construct the independence polytopes of matroids. Thus, he gets that the Ehrhart polynomials of independence polytopes have positive coefficients, too. The note is a step towards the conjecture, that each generalized permutohedron with integer Cartesian coordinates has an Ehrhart polynomials with positive coefficients.