The reflexive dimension of a lattice polytope (Q2506274)

A lattice polytope is the convex hull of a finite set of integral points in \(\mathbb R^d\). It is called reflexive if its polar polytope is a lattice polytope as well. Besides being interesting geometric and combinatorial objects, reflexive polytopes are important in theoretical physics (string theory). It is well-known that for every~\(d\) there are only finitely many reflexive polytopes. In this paper it is shown that nevertheless every lattice polytope appears as a face of a higher dimensional reflexive polytope. In fact, the construction is quite simple: One may form a sequence of wedges starting from the lattice polytope, where the number of operations (and thus the dimension of the resulting polytope) depends on the geometry of the lattice polytope. Starting from this result, the authors define the reflexive dimension of a lattice polytope \(P\) to be the minimal dimension of any reflexive polytope of which \(P\) is a face. They give lower and upper bounds on the reflexive dimensions of line segments (one-dimensional lattice polytopes) as well as upper bounds on the reflexive dimensions of products, joins, and scalings of lattice polytopes.