Mixed volume of small reaction networks (Q2036709)

The paper is a modest start in the ambitious program of computing the so-called mixed volume of a reaction network, which is, by Bernstein's theorem, an upper bound for the less accessible, but chemically relevant maximum number of positive steady states of that network. For \(1\)-species networks, the mixed volume can be easily determined, the overcount can be arbitrarily large, and the case of overcount zero (sharp upper bound) is characterized. For at most bimolecular networks with two species and two reactions, the overcount is shown to be zero, with few exceptions of overcount one which are listed in a table. As for Bernstein's theorem, it expresses the number of non-trivial solutions of finitely many complex polynomials in terms of the volume of the Minkowski sum of the corresponding Newton polytopes, the latter being a notion from convex, algebraic and tropical geometry.