Local optimality of Zaks-Perles-Wills simplices (Q2280055)

A polytope in the \(d\)-dimensional space \(\mathbb{R}^d\) is called a lattice polytope when its vertices lie in the integer lattice \(\mathbb{Z}^d\). An affine transformation from \(\mathbb{R}^d\) to \(\mathbb{R}^d\) sending \(\mathbb{Z}^d\) to itself is called a unimodular transformation. There are several interesting families of lattice polytopes, among them there is the family \(\mathcal{P}^d(k)\) of \(d\)-dimensional lattice polytopes in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) with exactly \(k\) interior lattice points. By \(\mathcal{S}^d(k)\), the family of all simplices belonging to \(\mathcal{P}^d(k)\) is denoted. It is known that the volume of the elements in \(\mathcal{P}^d(k)\) is bounded for \(k\geq 1\), so an interesting problem in convex geometry is to find tight bounds for the families \(\mathcal{P}^d(k)\) and \(\mathcal{S}^d(k)\). In this article, the author shows that there is a simplex \(S_{d,k}\) who is a volume maximizer in a certain family of \(\mathcal{S}^d(k)\), up to unimodular transformations. The simplex \(S_{d,k}\) was discovered by Zaks, Perles and Wills in [\textit{J. Zaks} et al., Elem. Math. 37, 44--46 (1982; Zbl 0443.52010)], and it is defined as \[ S_{d,k}:= \mathrm{conv}(o, s_1e_1,\dots, s_{d-1}e_{d-1}, (k + 1)(s_d-1)e_d), \] where \(s_d\) are the elements of the Sylvester sequence, defined recursively by \[ s_i=\begin{cases} 2 & \text{ if } i=1\\ 1 + s_1\cdots s_{i-1} &\text{ if } i\geq 2. \end{cases} \] In [loc. cit.], it was proved that \(S_{d,k}\) has exactly \(k\) interior lattice points and its volume is \(\frac{1}{d}(k + 1)(s_d - 1)^2\). The family \(\mathcal{S}^d(k,l)\subset\mathcal{S}^d(k)\) consists of simplices that have a facet with exactly \(l\) lattice points in its relative interior. The main theorem is about maximality in \(\mathcal{S}^d(k,1)\). The proofs are based on generalizations/refinements of van der Corput's theorem, where the volume of a compact set is bounded in terms of the number of interior lattice points of the set. The article is well motivated and clearly written.