Drums of high width (Q7006396)

This paper considers \textit{prismatoids}-polytopes with two disjoint facets that contain all the vertices. The \textit{width} of a prismatoid is the distance between the two disjoint facets in the facet-ridge graph. The paper provides a new family of 5-dimensional prismatoids with \(16k+24\) vertices and width at least \(5+k\). A first consequence of this construction is that, for any integer \(k\ge 1\), there exists a polytope of dimension \(d=16k+19\) with \(2d\) facets and diameter \(d+k\). Further define the \textit{excess width} as the function\N\[\Nf_{d}(n)=\max_{\text{\(d\)-dimensional \(n\)-vertex prismatoids \(P\)}} \mathrm{width}(P)-d\N\]\NAnother consequence is that the function \(f_{5}\) grows linearly in \(n\), answering a question of \textit{B. Matschke} et al. [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 110, No. 3, 647--672 (2015; Zbl 1330.52015)].