Families of tight inequalities for polytopes (Q2572595)

The flag vector of a convex polytope counts chains of faces, ordered by inclusion, by dimensions. There is much interest in characterizing these vectors, and the focus has been on linear inequalities on flag vectors. The two main sources of inequalities are from the \(h\)-vector of the associated toric variety, and from the \(cd\)-index of the polytope. Basic inequalities are combined by convolution (due to Kalai) and by lifting techniques (due to Ehrenborg) to give a large collection of linear inequalities. The relationships among these inequalities are not well understood. In particular we are far from a description of the closed convex hull of flag vectors of all \(d\)-polytopes. In this paper the author finds some faces of the cone of flag vectors, spanned by special classes of polytopes. She shows that for all \(k\), the flag vectors of \(k\)-simplicial polytopes span a face of the cone. (This can also be seen from work of \textit{G. Kalai} [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 49, 191--209 (1988; Zbl 0691.05006)]). Also studied is the subcone of flag vectors of \(d\)-dimensional zonotopes. Stenson shows that in this closed convex cone, the flag vectors of cubical zonotopes span a face of dimension \(\lfloor d/2 \rfloor\). Other results include new inequalities on flag vectors of \(d\)-zonotopes (strengthening earlier results by Varchenko and by Liu) and an upper bound on the dimension of flag vectors of \(k\)-cubical \(d\)-zonotopes.