arXiv subjects

Johannes Hofscheier

Publications and source records attributed to Johannes Hofscheier.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A very ample lattice polytope with a non-unimodal $h^*$-vector

Lattice polytopes are called very ample if for every sufficiently large $k$ every lattice point of height $k$ in the cone over the lattice polytope is the sum of $k$ lattice points of height $1$. This is a weakening of the well-known integer decomposition property (also called IDP). We give an example of a very ample lattice polytope whose $h^*$-vector is non-unimodal. Here, the $h^*$-vector is the coefficient vector of the numerator of the Ehrhart series of the lattice polytope. This answers a question of Ferroni and Higashitani, as well as a related question by Balletti. The main question whether IDP lattice polytopes have unimodal $h^*$-vector is still open. The example was found using ChatGPT 5.6 Sol. It is just the Cartesian square of a lattice polytope belonging to a class of very ample examples constructed by Lasoń and Michalek.

math.CO↗

arXiv2026

Toricness and smoothness criteria for spherical varieties

We prove equivalent numerical conditions for a complete spherical variety to admit a toric structure, and for the smoothness of an arbitrary spherical variety along any given G-orbit. The conditions are in terms of spherical skeletons, a coarse ''subset'' of the Luna-Vust data of a spherical variety. Our smoothness criterion improves upon classical criteria by removing the dependency on external reference tables.

math.AG↗

arXiv2025

The generalised Mukai conjecture for spherical varieties

We prove the generalised Mukai conjecture for $\mathbb{Q}$-factorial spherical Fano varieties. In this case, a stronger inequality holds featuring an extra term - the minimum absolute complexity of a log Calabi-Yau pair - which measures how close the Fano variety is to being toric.

math.AG↗

arXiv2025

Is there a smooth lattice polytope which does not have the integer decomposition property?

We introduce Tadao Oda's famous question on lattice polytopes which was originally posed at Oberwolfach in 1997 and, although simple to state, has remained unanswered. The question is motivated by a discussion of the two-dimensional case - including a proof of Pick's Theorem, which elegantly relates the area of a lattice polygon to the number of lattice points it contains in its interior and on its boundary.

math.CO↗

arXiv2025

Examples of IDP lattice polytopes with non-log-concave $h^*$-vector

Lattice polytopes are called IDP polytopes if they have the integer decomposition property, i.e., any lattice point in a $k$th dilation is a sum of $k$ lattice points in the polytope. It is a long-standing conjecture whether the numerator of the Ehrhart series of an IDP polytope, called the $h^*$-polynomial, has a unimodal coefficient vector. In this preliminary report on research in progress we present examples showing that $h^*$-vectors of IDP polytopes do not have to be log-concave. This answers a question of Luis Ferroni and Akihiro Higashitani. As this is an ongoing project, this paper will be updated with more details and examples in the near future.

math.CO↗

arXiv2025

Local $h^*$-polynomials for one-row Hermite normal form simplices

The local $h^*$-polynomial of a lattice polytope is an important invariant arising in Ehrhart theory. Our focus is on lattice simplices presented in Hermite normal form with a single non-trivial row. We prove that when the off-diagonal entries are fixed, the distribution of coefficients for the local $h^*$-polynomial of these simplices has a limit as the normalized volume goes to infinity. Further, this limiting distribution is determined by the coefficients for a particular choice of normalized volume. We also provide an analysis of two specific families of such simplices to illustrate and motivate our main result.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

Classification and Ehrhart Theory of Denominator 2 Polygons

We present an algorithm for growing the denominator $r$ polygons containing a fixed number of lattice points and enumerate such polygons containing few lattice points for small $r$. We describe the Ehrhart quasi-polynomial of a rational polygon in terms of boundary and interior point counts. Using this, we bound the coefficients of Ehrhart quasi-polynomials of denominator 2 polygons. In particular, we completely classify such polynomials in the case of zero interior points.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

Spherical amoebae and a spherical logarithm map

Let $G$ be a connected reductive algebraic group over $\mathbb{C}$ with a maximal compact subgroup $K$. Let $G/H$ be a (quasi-affine) spherical homogeneous space. In the first part of the paper, following Akhiezer's definition of spherical functions, we introduce a $K$-invariant map $sLog_{Γ, t}: G/H \to \mathbb{R}^s$ which depends on a choice of a finite set $Γ$ of dominant weights and $s = |Γ|$. We call $sLog_{Γ, t}$ a spherical logarithm map. We show that when $Γ$ generates the highest weight monoid of $G/H$, the image of the spherical logarithm map parametrizes $K$-orbits in $G/H$. This idea of using the spherical functions to understand the geometry of the space $K \backslash G/H$ of $K$-orbits in $G/H$ can be viewed as a generalization of the classical Cartan decomposition. In the second part of the paper, we define the spherical amoeba (depending on $Γ$ and $t$) of a subvariety $Y$ of $G/H$ as $sLog_{Γ, t}(Y)$, and we ask for conditions under which the image of a subvariety $Y \subset G/H$ under $sLog_{Γ, t}$ converges, as $t \to 0$, in the sense of Kuratowski to its spherical tropicalization as defined by Tevelev and Vogiannou. We prove a partial result toward answering this question, which shows in particular that the valuation cone is always contained in the Kuratowski limit of the spherical amoebae of $G/H$. We also show that the limit of the spherical amoebae of $G/H$ is equal to its valuation cone in a number of interesting examples, including when $G/H$ is horospherical, and in the case when $G/H$ is the space of hyperbolic triangles.

math.AG↗

arXiv2022

Machine Learning the Dimension of a Polytope

We use machine learning to predict the dimension of a lattice polytope directly from its Ehrhart series. This is highly effective, achieving almost 100% accuracy. We also use machine learning to recover the volume of a lattice polytope from its Ehrhart series, and to recover the dimension, volume, and quasi-period of a rational polytope from its Ehrhart series. In each case we achieve very high accuracy, and we propose mathematical explanations for why this should be so.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

Hilbert Series, Machine Learning, and Applications to Physics

We describe how simple machine learning methods successfully predict geometric properties from Hilbert series (HS). Regressors predict embedding weights in projective space to ${\sim}1$ mean absolute error, whilst classifiers predict dimension and Gorenstein index to $>90\%$ accuracy with ${\sim}0.5\%$ standard error. Binary random forest classifiers managed to distinguish whether the underlying HS describes a complete intersection with high accuracies exceeding $95\%$. Neural networks (NNs) exhibited success identifying HS from a Gorenstein ring to the same order of accuracy, whilst generation of 'fake' HS proved trivial for NNs to distinguish from those associated to the three-dimensional Fano varieties considered.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Generalised Flatness Constants: A Framework Applied in Dimension $2$

Let $A \in \{ \mathbb{Z}, \mathbb{R} \}$ and $X \subset \mathbb{R}^d$ be a bounded set. Affine transformations given by an automorphism of $\mathbb{Z}^d$ and a translation in $A^d$ are called (affine) $A$-unimodular transformations. The image of $X$ under such a transformation is called an $A$-unimodular copy of $X$. It was shown in [Averkov, Hofscheier, Nill, 2019] that every convex body whose width is "big enough" contains an $A$-unimodular copy of $X$. The threshold when this happens is called the generalised flatness constant $\mathrm{Flt}_d^A(X)$. It resembles the classical flatness constant if $A=\mathbb{Z}$ and $X$ is a lattice point. In this work, we introduce a general framework for the explicit computation of these numerical constants. The approach relies on the study of $A$-$X$-free convex bodies generalising lattice-free (also known as hollow) convex bodies. We then focus on the case that $X=P$ is a full-dimensional polytope and show that inclusion-maximal $A$-$P$-free convex bodies are polytopes. The study of those inclusion-maximal polytopes provides us with the means to explicitly determine generalised flatness constants. We apply our approach to the case $X=Δ_2$ the standard simplex in $\mathbb{R}^2$ of normalised volume $1$ and compute $\mathrm{Flt}^{\mathbb{R}}_2(Δ_2)=2$ and $\mathrm{Flt}^{\mathbb{Z}}_2(Δ_2)=\frac{10}3$.

math.MG↗

arXiv2021

Polytopes and Machine Learning

We introduce machine learning methodology to the study of lattice polytopes. With supervised learning techniques, we predict standard properties such as volume, dual volume, reflexivity, etc, with accuracies up to 100%. We focus on 2d polygons and 3d polytopes with Plücker coordinates as input, which out-perform the usual vertex representation.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

Cohomology rings of toric bundles and the ring of conditions

The celebrated BKK Theorem expresses the number of roots of a system of generic Laurent polynomials in terms of the mixed volume of the corresponding system of Newton polytopes.Pukhlikov and the second author noticed that the cohomology ring of smooth projective toric varieties over $\mathbb{C}$ can be computed via the BKK Theorem. This complemented the known descriptions of the cohomology ring of toric varieties, like the one in terms of Stanley-Reisner algebras. Sankaran and Uma generalized the "Stanley-Reisner description" to the case of toric bundles, i.e. equivariant compactifications of (not necessarily algebraic) torus principal bundles. We provide a description of the cohomology ring of toric bundles which is based on a generalization of the \BKK Theorem, and thus extends the approach by Pukhlikov and the second author. Indeed, for every cohomology class of the base of the toric bundle, we obtain a BKK-type theorem. Furthermore, our proof relies on a description of graded-commutative algebras which satisfy Poincaré duality. From this computation of the cohomology ring of toric bundles, we obtain a description of the ring of conditions of horospherical homogeneous spaces as well as a version of Brion-Kazarnovskii theorem for them. We conclude the manuscript with a number of examples. In particular, we apply our results to toric bundles over a full flag variety $G/B$. The description that we get generalizes the corresponding description of the cohomology ring of toric varieties as well as the one of full flag varieties $G/B$ previously obtained by Kaveh.

math.AG↗

arXiv2021

Splittings of Toric Ideals

Let $I \subseteq R = \mathbb{K}[x_1,\ldots,x_n]$ be a toric ideal, i.e., a binomial prime ideal. We investigate when the ideal $I$ can be "split" into the sum of two smaller toric ideals. For a general toric ideal $I$, we give a sufficient condition for this splitting in terms of the integer matrix that defines $I$. When $I = I_G$ is the toric ideal of a finite simple graph $G$, we give additional splittings of $I_G$ related to subgraphs of $G$. When there exists a splitting $I = I_1+I_2$ of the toric ideal, we show that in some cases we can describe the (multi-)graded Betti numbers of $I$ in terms of the (multi-)graded Betti numbers of $I_1$ and $I_2$.

math.AC↗

arXiv2019

Generalized flatness constants, spanning lattice polytopes, and the Gromov width

In this paper we motivate some new directions of research regarding the lattice width of convex bodies. We show that convex bodies of sufficiently large width contain a unimodular copy of a standard simplex. This implies that every lattice polytope contains a minimal generating set of the affine lattice spanned by its lattice points such that the number of generators is bounded by a constant which only depends on the dimension. We also discuss relations to recent results on spanning lattice polytopes and how our results could be viewed as the beginning of the study of generalized flatness constants. Regarding symplectic geometry, we point out how the lattice width of a Delzant polytope is related to upper and lower bounds on the Gromov width of its associated symplectic toric manifold. Throughout, we include several open questions.

math.CO↗

arXiv2018

Betti numbers of toric ideals of graphs: A case study

We compute the graded Betti numbers for the toric ideal of a family of graphs constructed by adjoining a cycle to a complete bipartite graph. The key observation is that this family admits an initial ideal which has linear quotients. As a corollary, we compute the Hilbert series and $h$-vector for all the toric ideals of graphs in this family.

math.AC↗

arXiv2018

Smooth centrally symmetric polytopes in dimension 3 are IDP

In 1997 Oda conjectured that every smooth lattice polytope has the integer decomposition property. We prove Oda's conjecture for centrally symmetric $3$-dimensional polytopes, by showing they are covered by lattice parallelepipeds and unimodular simplices.

math.CO↗

arXiv2018

Spanning Lattice Polytopes and the Uniform Position Principle

A lattice polytope $P$ is called IDP if any lattice point in its $k$th dilate is a sum of $k$ lattice points in $P$. In 1991 Stanley proved a strong inequality in Ehrhart theory for IDP lattice polytopes. We show that his conclusion holds under much milder assumptions, namely if the lattice polytope $P$ is spanning, i.e., any lattice point of the ambient lattice is an integer affine combination of lattice points in $P$. As an application, we get a generalization of Hibi's Lower Bound Theorem. Our proof relies on generalizing Bertini's theorem to the semistandard situation and Harris' Uniform Position Principle to certain curves in weighted projective space.

math.CO↗