Projection problems for symmetric polytopes (Q855766)

For a polytope \(P\subset\mathbb{R}^n\) with the origin in its interior, \textit{E. Lutwak}, \textit{D. Yang} and \textit{G. Zhang} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 353, No. 5, 1767--1779 (2001; Zbl 0971.52011)] introduced the function \(U(P)\) as \[ U(P)^n= \sum V_{i_1}\cdots V_{i_n}, \] where \(V_i\) is the volume of the pyramid built by the origin and the \(i\)th facet of \(P\) and where the summation is over all linearly independent \(n\)-tuples of facet normals \(u_{i_1},\dots, u_{i_n}\). They conjectured that \[ U(P)\geq {(n!)^{1/n}\over n} V(P), \] for an origin-symmetric \(P\) (\(V(P)\) denoting the volume of \(P\)), with equality if and only if \(P\) is a parallelotope. In this paper, the authors settle this conjecture. They also use an inequality of Lutwak, Yang and Zhang [loc. cit.] to show that, for origin-symmetric \(P\), \[ V{(\Pi P)\over U(P)^{n-1}}\leq 2^n{n^{n-1}\over (n!)^{(n-1)/n}}, \] with equality if and only if \(P\) is a parallelotope. Here, for a convex body \(K\), \(\Pi K\) is the projection body of \(K\). The latter inequality can be viewed as an analogue of a conjectured inequality for \[ {V(\Pi K)\over V(K)^{n-1}}, \] for symmetric convex bodies \(K\), which is a well-known open problem in convex geometry.