Intersection bodies of polytopes (Q2143391)

Intersection bodies were introduced by \textit{E. Lutwak} [Adv. Math. 71, No. 2, 232--261 (1988; Zbl 0657.52002)] in relation with the Busemann-Petty problem. If \(K\) is a convex body that contains the origin of the ambient space \(\mathbb{R}^d\), then its intersection body \(IK\) is the union of all the line segments in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) of the form \([-V(u)u,V(u)u]\) where \(u\) ranges over the unit sphere \(\mathbb{S}^{d-1}\) and \(V(u)\) denotes the \((d-1)\)-dimensional volume of \(K\cap{u^\perp}\) (here, \(u^\perp\) stands for the hyperplane through the origin and orthogonal to \(u\)). This description can be generalized to the case when \(K\) no longer contains the origin. It is known that if \(K\) is centrally-symmetric with respect to the origin, then \(IK\) remains convex. However, one can always translate \(K\) by some vector \(x\) in such a way that \(I(K+x)\) becomes non-convex. This article focuses on the case when \(K\) is a polytope (that is not required to be centrally symmetric or to contain the origin). The authors show that the intersection body \(IK\) of a polytope \(K\) is a semialgebraic set (in the sense that \(IK\) can be described using finitely-many polynomial inequalities). This results from the observation that the \((d-1)\)-dimensional volume of \(K\cap{u^\perp}\) can be expressed as a rational function of \(u\) when \(u\) varies within any portion of \(\mathbb{S}^{d-1}\) wherein \(u^\perp\) never passes a vertex of \(K\). The proof is constructive (the volume of \(K\cap{u^\perp}\) is obtained as a sum of the volume of the simplices of a triangulation) and can be turned into an algorithm that computes the intersection body of polytopes, which the authors describe. Since the intersection bodies of polytopes are semi algebraic, their algebraic boundary (that is, the \(\mathbb{R}\)-Zariski closure of their Euclidean boundary) can be studied. The authors compute the irreducible components of these algebraic boundaries and bound their degrees. Finally, they prove that the algebraic boundary of the intersection body of the hypercube \([-1,1]^d\) has at least \(2d\) linear components, each corresponding to the vectors \(u\) such that \(u^\perp\) cuts the hypercube between a given ordered pair of opposite facets of \([-1,1]^d\).