346 research outputs found
Edge-Graph Diameter Bounds for Convex Polytopes with Few Facets
We show that the edge graph of a 6-dimensional polytope with 12 facets has
diameter at most 6, thus verifying the d-step conjecture of Klee and Walkup in
the case of d=6. This implies that for all pairs (d,n) with n-d \leq 6 the
diameter of the edge graph of a d-polytope with n facets is bounded by 6, which
proves the Hirsch conjecture for all n-d \leq 6. We show this result by showing
this bound for a more general structure -- so-called matroid polytopes -- by
reduction to a small number of satisfiability problems.Comment: 9 pages; update shortcut constraint discussio
An update on the Hirsch conjecture
The Hirsch conjecture was posed in 1957 in a letter from Warren M. Hirsch to
George Dantzig. It states that the graph of a d-dimensional polytope with n
facets cannot have diameter greater than n - d.
Despite being one of the most fundamental, basic and old problems in polytope
theory, what we know is quite scarce. Most notably, no polynomial upper bound
is known for the diameters that are conjectured to be linear. In contrast, very
few polytopes are known where the bound is attained. This paper collects
known results and remarks both on the positive and on the negative side of the
conjecture. Some proofs are included, but only those that we hope are
accessible to a general mathematical audience without introducing too many
technicalities.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures. Many proofs have been taken out from version 2
and put into the appendix arXiv:0912.423
Recent progress on the combinatorial diameter of polytopes and simplicial complexes
The Hirsch conjecture, posed in 1957, stated that the graph of a
-dimensional polytope or polyhedron with facets cannot have diameter
greater than . The conjecture itself has been disproved, but what we
know about the underlying question is quite scarce. Most notably, no polynomial
upper bound is known for the diameters that were conjectured to be linear. In
contrast, no polyhedron violating the conjecture by more than 25% is known.
This paper reviews several recent attempts and progress on the question. Some
work in the world of polyhedra or (more often) bounded polytopes, but some try
to shed light on the question by generalizing it to simplicial complexes. In
particular, we include here our recent and previously unpublished proof that
the maximum diameter of arbitrary simplicial complexes is in and
we summarize the main ideas in the polymath 3 project, a web-based collective
effort trying to prove an upper bound of type nd for the diameters of polyhedra
and of more general objects (including, e. g., simplicial manifolds).Comment: 34 pages. This paper supersedes one cited as "On the maximum diameter
of simplicial complexes and abstractions of them, in preparation
Topological Prismatoids and Small Simplicial Spheres of Large Diameter
We introduce topological prismatoids, a combinatorial abstraction of the
(geometric) prismatoids recently introduced by the second author to construct
counter-examples to the Hirsch conjecture. We show that the `strong -step
Theorem' that allows to construct such large-diameter polytopes from
`non--step' prismatoids still works at this combinatorial level. Then, using
metaheuristic methods on the flip graph, we construct four combinatorially
different non--step -dimensional topological prismatoids with
vertices. This implies the existence of -dimensional spheres with
vertices whose combinatorial diameter exceeds the Hirsch bound. These examples
are smaller that the previously known examples by Mani and Walkup in 1980 (
vertices, dimension ).
Our non-Hirsch spheres are shellable but we do not know whether they are
realizable as polytopes.Comment: 20 pages. Changes from v1 and v2: Reduced the part on shellability
and general improvement to accesibilit
Combinatorics and Geometry of Transportation Polytopes: An Update
A transportation polytope consists of all multidimensional arrays or tables
of non-negative real numbers that satisfy certain sum conditions on subsets of
the entries. They arise naturally in optimization and statistics, and also have
interest for discrete mathematics because permutation matrices, latin squares,
and magic squares appear naturally as lattice points of these polytopes.
In this paper we survey advances on the understanding of the combinatorics
and geometry of these polyhedra and include some recent unpublished results on
the diameter of graphs of these polytopes. In particular, this is a thirty-year
update on the status of a list of open questions last visited in the 1984 book
by Yemelichev, Kovalev and Kravtsov and the 1986 survey paper of Vlach.Comment: 35 pages, 13 figure
Graphs of Transportation Polytopes
This paper discusses properties of the graphs of 2-way and 3-way
transportation polytopes, in particular, their possible numbers of vertices and
their diameters. Our main results include a quadratic bound on the diameter of
axial 3-way transportation polytopes and a catalogue of non-degenerate
transportation polytopes of small sizes. The catalogue disproves five
conjectures about these polyhedra stated in the monograph by Yemelichev et al.
(1984). It also allowed us to discover some new results. For example, we prove
that the number of vertices of an transportation polytope is a
multiple of the greatest common divisor of and .Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures. Final version. Improvements to the exposition of
several lemmas and the upper bound in Theorem 1.1 is improved by a factor of
tw
A counterexample to the Hirsch conjecture
The Hirsch Conjecture (1957) stated that the graph of a -dimensional
polytope with facets cannot have (combinatorial) diameter greater than
. That is, that any two vertices of the polytope can be connected by a
path of at most edges.
This paper presents the first counterexample to the conjecture. Our polytope
has dimension 43 and 86 facets. It is obtained from a 5-dimensional polytope
with 48 facets which violates a certain generalization of the -step
conjecture of Klee and Walkup.Comment: 28 pages, 10 Figures: Changes from v2: Minor edits suggested by
referees. This version has been accepted in the Annals of Mathematic
Three Puzzles on Mathematics, Computation, and Games
In this lecture I will talk about three mathematical puzzles involving
mathematics and computation that have preoccupied me over the years. The first
puzzle is to understand the amazing success of the simplex algorithm for linear
programming. The second puzzle is about errors made when votes are counted
during elections. The third puzzle is: are quantum computers possible?Comment: ICM 2018 plenary lecture, Rio de Janeiro, 36 pages, 7 Figure
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