Decomposition of polytopes using inner parallel bodies (Q2339366)

Let \(P \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n\) be a polytope and \(\lambda \leq 0\). This paper considers the polytope \(P_{\lambda}\), which is obtained from \(P\) by translating all facet-defining hyperplanes inwards by a distance of \(|\lambda|\). The main question that is considered is the following: Given a polytope \(P\) and \(\lambda \leq 0\), is it possible to express \(P\) as the Minkowski sum \(P_{\lambda} + Q\) for some other polytope \(Q\)? The main results in the paper are two theorems giving sufficient and necessary conditions for \(P_{\tau}\) to be a Minkowski summand of \(P_{\mu}\) for all \(\tau \leq \mu \leq 0\). The first theorem gives the equivalence in terms of the support functions of \(P\), \(P_{\tau}\), and the form body of \(P_{\mu}\). The second theorem gives the equivalence in terms of the facet-defining normal vectors.