Local optimality of Zaks-Perles-Wills simplices

DOI10.1016/J.AAM.2019.101943MaRDI QIDQ2280055zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Publication date 17 December 2019

Published in Advances in Applied Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04852

lattice polytopes volume bounds Zaks-Perles-Wills simplices

Toric varieties, Newton polyhedra, Okounkov bodies (14M25) Length, area, volume and convex sets (aspects of convex geometry) (52A38) Lattice polytopes in convex geometry (including relations with commutative algebra and algebraic geometry) (52B20)

Abstract: In 1982, Zaks, Perles and Wills discovered a d-dimensional lattice simplex S_{d,k} with k interior lattice points, whose volume is linear in k and doubly exponential in the dimension d. It is conjectured that, for all d ge 3 and k ge 1, the simplex S_{d,k} is a volume maximizer in the family P^d(k) of all d-dimensional lattice polytopes with k interior lattice points. To obtain a partial confirmation of this conjecture, one can try to verify it for a subfamily of P^d(k) that naturally contains S_{d,k} as one of the members. Currently, one does not even know whether S_{d,k} is optimal within the family S^d(k) of all d-dimensional lattice simplices with k interior lattice points. In view of this, it makes sense to look at even narrower families, for example, some subfamilies of S^d(k). The simplex S_{d,k} of Zaks, Perles and Wills has a facet with only one lattice point in the relative interior. We show that S_{d,k} is a volume maximizer in the family of simplices S in S^d(k) that have a facet with one lattice point in its relative interior. We also show that, in the above family, the volume maximizer is unique up to unimodular transformations.

Review text

A polytope in the \(d\)-dimensional space \(\mathbb{R}^d\) is called a lattice polytope when its vertices lie in the integer lattice \(\mathbb{Z}^d\). An affine transformation from \(\mathbb{R}^d\) to \(\mathbb{R}^d\) sending \(\mathbb{Z}^d\) to itself is called a unimodular transformation. There are several interesting families of lattice polytopes, among them there is the family \(\mathcal{P}^d(k)\) of \(d\)-dimensional lattice polytopes in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) with exactly \(k\) interior lattice points. By \(\mathcal{S}^d(k)\), the family of all simplices belonging to \(\mathcal{P}^d(k)\) is denoted. It is known that the volume of the elements in \(\mathcal{P}^d(k)\) is bounded for \(k\geq 1\), so an interesting problem in convex geometry is to find tight bounds for the families \(\mathcal{P}^d(k)\) and \(\mathcal{S}^d(k)\). In this article, the author shows that there is a simplex \(S_{d,k}\) who is a volume maximizer in a certain family of \(\mathcal{S}^d(k)\), up to unimodular transformations. The simplex \(S_{d,k}\) was discovered by Zaks, Perles and Wills in [\textit{J. Zaks} et al., Elem. Math. 37, 44--46 (1982; Zbl 0443.52010)], and it is defined as \[ S_{d,k}:= \mathrm{conv}(o, s_1e_1,\dots, s_{d-1}e_{d-1}, (k + 1)(s_d-1)e_d), \] where \(s_d\) are the elements of the Sylvester sequence, defined recursively by \[ s_i=\begin{cases} 2 & \text{ if } i=1\\ 1 + s_1\cdots s_{i-1} &\text{ if } i\geq 2. \end{cases} \] In [loc. cit.], it was proved that \(S_{d,k}\) has exactly \(k\) interior lattice points and its volume is \(\frac{1}{d}(k + 1)(s_d - 1)^2\). The family \(\mathcal{S}^d(k,l)\subset\mathcal{S}^d(k)\) consists of simplices that have a facet with exactly \(l\) lattice points in its relative interior. The main theorem is about maximality in \(\mathcal{S}^d(k,1)\). The proofs are based on generalizations/refinements of van der Corput's theorem, where the volume of a compact set is bounded in terms of the number of interior lattice points of the set. The article is well motivated and clearly written.

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