Constructing neighborly polytopes and oriented matroids

A d-polytope P is neighborly if every subset of b d 2 c vertices is a face of P. In 1982, Shemer introduced a sewing construction that allows to add a vertex to a neighborly polytope in such a way as to obtain a new neighborly polytope. With this, he constructed superexponentially many different neighborly polytopes. The concept of neighborliness extends naturally to oriented matroids. Duals of neighborly oriented matroids also have a nice characterization: balanced oriented matroids. In this paper, we generalize Shemer’s sewing construction to oriented matroids, providing a simpler proof. Moreover we provide a new technique that allows to construct balanced oriented matroids. In the dual setting, it constructs a neighborly oriented matroid whose contraction at a particular vertex is a prescribed neighborly oriented matroid. We compare the families of polytopes that can be constructed with both methods, and show that the new construction allows to construct many new polytopes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Constructing neighborly polytopes and oriented matroids

A $d$-polytope $P$ is neighborly if every subset of $\lfloor\frac{d}{2}\rfloor$vertices is a face of $P$. In 1982, Shemer introduced a sewing construction that allows to add a vertex to a neighborly polytope in such a way as to obtain a new neighborly polytope. With this, he constructed superexponentially many different neighborly polytopes. The concept of neighborliness extends naturally to oriented matroids. Duals of neighborly oriented matroids also have a nice characterization: balanced oriented matroids. In this paper, we generalize Shemer's sewing construction to oriented matroids, providing a simpler proof. Moreover we provide a new technique that allows to construct balanced oriented matroids. In the dual setting, it constructs a neighborly oriented matroid whose contraction at a particular vertex is a prescribed neighborly oriented matroid. We compare the families of polytopes that can be constructed with both methods, and show that the new construction allows to construct many new polytopes

The universality theorem for neighborly polytopes

In this note, we prove that every open primary basic semialgebraic set is stably equivalent to the realization space of an even-dimensional neighborly polytope. This in particular provides the final step for Mn\"ev's proof of the universality theorem for simplicial polytopes.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Small change

Universality theorems for inscribed polytopes and Delaunay triangulations

We prove that every primary basic semialgebraic set is homotopy equivalent to the set of inscribed realizations (up to M\"obius transformation) of a polytope. If the semialgebraic set is moreover open, then, in addition, we prove that (up to homotopy) it is a retract of the realization space of some inscribed neighborly (and simplicial) polytope. We also show that all algebraic extensions of $\mathbb{Q}$ are needed to coordinatize inscribed polytopes. These statements show that inscribed polytopes exhibit the Mn\"ev universality phenomenon. Via stereographic projections, these theorems have a direct translation to universality theorems for Delaunay subdivisions. In particular, our results imply that the realizability problem for Delaunay triangulations is polynomially equivalent to the existential theory of the reals.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure

Neighborly inscribed polytopes and Delaunay triangulations

We construct a large family of neighborly polytopes that can be realized with all the vertices on the boundary of any smooth strictly convex body. In particular, we show that there are superexponentially many combinatorially distinct neighborly polytopes that admit realizations inscribed on the sphere. These are the first examples of inscribable neighborly polytopes that are not cyclic polytopes, and provide the current best lower bound for the number of combinatorial types of inscribable polytopes (which coincides with the current best lower bound for the number of combinatorial types of polytopes). Via stereographic projections, this translates into a superexponential lower bound for the number of combinatorial types of (neighborly) Delaunay triangulations.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. We extended our results to arbitrary smooth strictly convex bodie

Six topics on inscribable polytopes

Inscribability of polytopes is a classic subject but also a lively research area nowadays. We illustrate this with a selection of well-known results and recent developments on six particular topics related to inscribable polytopes. Along the way we collect a list of (new and old) open questions.Comment: 11 page

Neighborly and almost neighborly configurations, and their duals

This thesis presents new applications of Gale duality to the study of polytopes with extremal combinatorial properties. It consists in two parts. The first one is devoted to the construction of neighborly polytopes and oriented matroids. The second part concerns the degree of point configurations, a combinatorial invariant closely related to neighborliness. A d-dimensional polytope P is called neighborly if every subset of at most d/2 vertices of P forms a face. In 1982, Ido Shemer presented a technique to construct neighborly polytopes, which he named the "Sewing construction". With it he could prove that the number of neighborly polytopes in dimension d with n vertices grows superexponentially with n. One of the contributions of this thesis is the analysis of the sewing construction from the point of view of lexicographic extensions. This allows us to present a technique that we call the "Extended Sewing construction", that generalizes it in several aspects and simplifies its proof. We also present a second generalization that we call the "Gale Sewing construction". This construction exploits Gale duality an is based on lexicographic extensions of the duals of neighborly polytopes and oriented matroids. Thanks to this technique we obtain one of the main results of this thesis: a lower bound of ((r+d)^(((r+d)/2)^2)/(r^((r/2)^2)d^((d/2)^2)e^(3rd/4)) for the number of combinatorial types of neighborly polytopes of even dimension d and r+d+1 vertices. This result not only improves Shemer's bound, but it also improves the current best bounds for the number of polytopes. The combination of both new techniques also allows us to construct many non-realizable neighborly oriented matroids. The degree of a point configuration is the maximal codimension of its interior faces. In particular, a simplicial polytope is neighborly if and only if the degree of its set of vertices is [(d+1)/2]. For this reason, d-dimensional configurations of degree k are also known as "(d-k)-almost neighborly". The second part of the thesis presents various results on the combinatorial structure of point configurations whose degree is small compared to their dimension; specifically, those whose degree is smaller than [(d+1)/2], the degree of neighborly polytopes. The study of this problem comes motivated by Ehrhart theory, where a notion equivalent to the degree - for lattice polytopes - has been widely studied during the last years. In addition, the study of the degree is also related to the "generalized lower bound theorem" for simplicial polytopes, with Cayley polytopes and with Tverberg theory. Among other results, we present a complete combinatorial classification for point configurations of degree 1. Moreover, we show combinatorial restrictions in terms of the novel concept of "weak Cayley configuration" for configurations whose degree is smaller than a third of the dimension. We also introduce the notion of "codegree decomposition" and conjecture that any configuration whose degree is smaller than half the dimension admits a non-trivial codegree decomposition. For this conjecture, we show various motivations and we prove some particular cases