On counterexamples to a conjecture of Wills and Ehrhart polynomials whose roots have equal real parts (Q405109)

The paper deals with the properties of the coefficients of an Ehrhart polynomial of a 0-symmetric lattice polytope with only one interior lattice point, namely it gives counterexamples to a conjecture due to J.M.Wills that they are maximized by the Ehrhart coefficients of the cube of side length equal to two. Moreover, the author discusses a family of lattice polytopes that satisfy the conditions of Wills' conjecture. The conjecture by J. M. Wills is introduced in Section 1 (Conjecture 1.1) and states that for any lattice \(n\)-dimensional polytope \(P\) of the type mentioned above, one has the following inequalities for all the Ehrhart coefficients: \(g_{i}(P)\leq g_{i}(C_n)\), where \(C_n\) is an \(n\)-cube. J.M.Wills proved this to be true in dimension 3. In Section 2 the main result (Theorem 2.1) is stated and proved, that a counterexample can be found to Wills' conjecture in all dimensions, greater or equal to 7 (such a counterexample \(P\) of any dimension \(n\) has \(g_1 (P) > g_1 (C_n)\) and can be obtained from a \(P_7\) as its product with a cube of the corresponding dimension). The proof uses a formula for Ehrhart coefficients of a product of lattice polytopes as well as computations with Bernoulli numbers. The author also tested the conjecture in dimensions 4, 5 and 6 but no counterexample was found. In the last Section 3 some inequalities for the numbers \(g_{i}(P)\) (in particular, inequalities between the volume and the number of lattice points in \(P\)) are proved (Theorem 3.1) in the case, when all the roots of the Ehrhart polynomial of \(P\) have real part \(-\frac{1}{a}\), for some \(a>0\). It follows, that Wills' conjecture holds for every such polytope with \(a=2\) (Corollary 3.3). Finally, the author introduces a class of lattice polytopes called \(l\)-reflexive polytopes, defined firstly by \textit{A. M. Kasprzyk} and \textit{B. Nill} [Electron. J. Comb. 19, No. 3, Research Paper P9, 18 p. (2012; Zbl 1258.52008)] as a generalization of a classical notion of a reflexive polytope (that is, \(l=1\)), and proves a condition on the roots of Ehrhart polynomial which provides a lattice polytope of index \(l\) that containes 0 in its interior to be (up to a unimodular transformation) \(l\)-reflexive (Corollary 3.7).