arXiv subjects

Katharina Jochemko

Publications and source records attributed to Katharina Jochemko.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Weighted lattice point enumeration in lecture hall order polytopes

We consider weighted lattice point enumeration in lecture hall order polytopes. We observe that these half-open polytopes are closed under weight-lifting for a large class of polynomial weights, including monomials and weights given by binomial coefficients. For rooted trees, we prove that the corresponding (weighted) $h^\ast$-polynomial is real-rooted thereby complementing previous results of Savage-Visontai and Brändén-Leander.

math.CO↗

arXiv2026

Ehrhart Theory over Abelian Group Rings

We introduce a unified framework for Ehrhart theory in which lattice point enumerators take coefficients in an Abelian group ring, encoding substantially richer algebraic data than classical counts. We prove that fundamental results of Ehrhart theory extend to this setting through a generalized Brion theorem, including rational generating functions, reciprocity phenomena, connections to volume, and vertex-cone decompositions. We further show how to derive $q$-enumerative and weighted theories from this setting, recasting several major refinements of Ehrhart theory as consequences of a single algebraic mechanism. We also show how our framework combines with equivariant Ehrhart theory.

math.CO↗

arXiv2026

Ehrhart positivity for marked order polytopes

Given a pair of finite posets $A \subseteq P$, the function counting integer-valued order preserving extensions of an order preserving map $λ: A\rightarrow \mathbb{Z}$ from $A$ to $P$ is given by a piecewise polynomial in $λ$. We provide a criterion for the nonnegativity of the coefficients of these multivariate polynomials and apply it to show that marked order polytopes of skew shapes are Ehrhart positive in a multivariate sense. This extends recent results of Ferroni-Morales-Panova on order polytopes of skew shapes and proves conjectures on the Ehrhart positivity of skew Gelfand-Tsetlin polytopes and $m$-generalized Pitman-Stanley polytopes due to Alexanderson-Alhajjar and Dugan-Hegarty-Morales-Raymond, respectively.

math.CO↗

arXiv2025

How to Learn a Star: Binary Classification with Starshaped Polyhedral Sets

We consider binary classification restricted to a class of continuous piecewise linear functions whose decision boundaries are (possibly nonconvex) starshaped polyhedral sets, supported on a fixed polyhedral simplicial fan. We investigate the expressivity of these function classes and describe the combinatorial and geometric structure of the loss landscape, most prominently the sublevel sets, for two loss-functions: the 0/1-loss (discrete loss) and a log-likelihood loss function. In particular, we give explicit bounds on the VC dimension of this model, and concretely describe the sublevel sets of the discrete loss as chambers in a hyperplane arrangement. For the log-likelihood loss, we give sufficient conditions for the optimum to be unique, and describe the geometry of the optimum when varying the rate parameter of the underlying exponential probability distribution.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Preservation of inequalities under Hadamard products

Wagner (1992) proved that the Hadamard product of two Pólya frequency sequences that are interpolated by polynomials is again a Pólya frequency sequence. We study whether related combinatorial properties are preserved under Hadamard products. In particular, we show that ultra log-concavity, $γ$-positivity, and interlacing symmetric decompositions are preserved. Furthermore, we disprove a conjecture by Fischer and Kubitzke (2014) concerning the real-rootedness of Hadamard powers.

math.CO↗

arXiv2025

Polyhedral combinatorics of bisectors

For any polyhedral norm, the bisector of two points is a polyhedral complex. We study combinatorial aspects of this complex. We investigate the sensitivity of the presence of labelled maximal cells in the bisector relative to the position of the two points. We thereby extend work of Criado, Joswig and Santos (2022) who showed that for the tropical distance function the presence of maximal cells is encoded by a polyhedral fan, the bisection fan. We initiate the study of bisection cones and bisection fans with respect to arbitrary polyhedral norms. In particular, we show that the bisection fan always exists for polyhedral norms in two dimensions. Furthermore, we determine the bisection fan of the $\ell_{1}$-norm and the $\ell_{\infty}$-norm as well as the discrete Wasserstein distance in arbitrary dimensions. Intricate combinatorial structures, such as the resonance arrangement, make their appearance. We apply our results to obtain bounds on the combinatorial complexity of the bisectors.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

On the instability of syzygy bundles on toric surfaces

We show that for every toric surface apart from the projective plane and a product of two projective lines and every ample line bundle there exists a polarisation such that the syzygy bundle associated to sufficiently high powers of the line bundle is not slope stable.

math.AG↗

arXiv2024

Weighted Ehrhart Theory: Extending Stanley's nonnegativity theorem

We generalize R. P. Stanley's celebrated theorem that the $h^\ast$-polynomial of the Ehrhart series of a rational polytope has nonnegative coefficients and is monotone under containment of polytopes. We show that these results continue to hold for weighted Ehrhart series where lattice points are counted with polynomial weights, as long as the weights are homogeneous polynomials decomposable as sums of products of linear forms that are nonnegative on the polytope. We also show nonnegativity of the $h^\ast$-polynomial as a real-valued function for a larger family of weights. We then target the case when the weight function is the square of a single (arbitrary) linear form. We show stronger results for two-dimensional convex lattice polygons and give concrete examples showing tightness of the hypotheses. As an application, we construct a counterexample to a conjecture by Berg, Jochemko, and Silverstein on Ehrhart tensor polynomials.

math.CO↗

arXiv2023

Learning polytopes with fixed facet directions

We consider the task of reconstructing polytopes with fixed facet directions from finitely many support function evaluations. We show that for a fixed simplicial normal fan the least-squares estimate is given by a convex quadratic program. We study the geometry of the solution set and give a combinatorial characterization for the uniqueness of the reconstruction in this case. We provide an algorithm that, under mild assumptions, converges to the unknown input shape as the number of noisy support function evaluations increases. We also discuss limitations of our results if the restriction on the normal fan is removed.

math.MG↗

arXiv2022

Lattice zonotopes of degree 2

The Ehrhart polynomial $ehr_P (n)$ of a lattice polytope $P$ gives the number of integer lattice points in the $n$-th dilate of $P$ for all integers $n\geq 0$. The degree of $P$ is defined as the degree of its $h^\ast$-polynomial, a particular transformation of the Ehrhart polynomial with many useful properties which serves as an important tool for classification questions in Ehrhart theory. A zonotope is the Minkowski (pointwise) sum of line segments. We classify all Ehrhart polynomials of lattice zonotopes of degree $2$ thereby complementing results of Scott (1976), Treutlein (2010), and Henk-Tagami (2009). Our proof is constructive: by considering solid-angles and the lattice width, we provide a characterization of all $3$-dimensional zonotopes of degree $2$.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

Ehrhart polynomials of rank two matroids

Over a decade ago De Loera, Haws and Köppe conjectured that Ehrhart polynomials of matroid polytopes have only positive coefficients and that the coefficients of the corresponding $h^*$-polynomials form a unimodal sequence. The first of these intensively studied conjectures has recently been disproved by the first author who gave counterexamples in all ranks greater or equal to three. In this article we complete the picture by showing that Ehrhart polynomials of matroids of lower rank have indeed only positive coefficients. Moreover, we show that they are coefficient-wise bounded by the Ehrhart polynomials of minimal and uniform matroids. We furthermore address the second conjecture by proving that $h^*$-polynomials of matroid polytopes of sparse paving matroids of rank two are real-rooted and therefore have log-concave and unimodal coefficients. In particular, this shows that the $h^*$-polynomial of the second hypersimplex is real-rooted thereby strengthening a result of De Loera, Haws and Köppe.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

Generalized permutahedra: Minkowski linear functionals and Ehrhart positivity

We characterize all signed Minkowski sums that define generalized permutahedra, extending results of Ardila-Benedetti-Doker (2010). We use this characterization to give a complete classification of all positive, translation-invariant, symmetric Minkowski linear functionals on generalized permutahedra. We show that they form a simplicial cone and explicitly describe their generators. We apply our results to prove that the linear coefficients of Ehrhart polynomials of generalized permutahedra, which include matroid polytopes, are non-negative, verifying conjectures of De Loera-Haws-Koeppe (2009) and Castillo-Liu (2018) in this case. We also apply this technique to give an example of a solid-angle polynomial of a generalized permutahedron that has negative linear term and obtain inequalities for beta invariants of contractions of matroids.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

The Eulerian transformation

Eulerian polynomials are fundamental in combinatorics and algebra. In this paper we study the linear transformation $\mathcal{A} : \mathbb{R}[t] \to \mathbb{R}[t]$ defined by $\mathcal{A}(t^n) = A_n(t)$, where $A_n(t)$ denotes the $n$-th Eulerian polynomial. We give combinatorial, topological and Ehrhart theoretic interpretations of the operator $\mathcal{A}$, and investigate questions of unimodality and real-rootedness. In particular, we disprove a conjecture by Brenti (1989) concerning the preservation of real zeros, and generalize and strengthen recent results of Haglund and Zhang (2019) on binomial Eulerian polynomials.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

Symmetric decompositions and the Veronese construction

We study rational generating functions of sequences $\{a_n\}_{n\geq 0}$ that agree with a polynomial and investigate symmetric decompositions of the numerator polynomial for subsequences $\{a_{rn}\}_{n\geq 0}$. We prove that if the numerator polynomial for $\{a_n\}_{n\geq 0}$ is of degree $s$ and its coefficients satisfy a set of natural linear inequalities then the symmetric decomposition of the numerator for $\{a_{rn}\}_{n\geq 0}$ is real-rooted whenever $r\geq \max \{s,d+1-s\}$. Moreover, if the numerator polynomial for $\{a_n\}_{n\geq 0}$ is symmetric then we show that the symmetric decomposition for $\{a_{rn}\}_{n\geq 0}$ is interlacing. We apply our results to Ehrhart series of lattice polytopes. In particular, we obtain that the $h^\ast$-polynomial of every dilation of a $d$-dimensional lattice polytope of degree $s$ has a real-rooted symmetric decomposition whenever the dilation factor $r$ satisfies $r\geq \max \{s,d+1-s\}$. Moreover, if the polytope is Gorenstein then this decomposition is interlacing.

math.CO↗

arXiv2019

Linear recursions for integer point transforms

We consider the integer point transform $σ_P (\mathbf{x}) = \sum _{\mathbf{m} \in P\cap \mathbb{Z}^n} \mathbf{x}^\mathbf{m} \in \mathbb C [x_1^{\pm 1},\ldots, x_n^{\pm 1}]$ of a polytope $P\subset \mathbb{R}^n$. We show that if $P$ is a lattice polytope then for any polytope $Q$ the sequence $\lbrace σ_{kP+Q}(\mathbf{x})\rbrace _{k\geq 0}$ satisfies a multivariate linear recursion that only depends on the vertices of $P$. We recover Brion's Theorem and by applying our results to Schur polynomials we disprove a conjecture of Alexandersson (2014).

math.CO↗

arXiv2018

Arithmetic aspects of symmetric edge polytopes

We investigate arithmetic, geometric and combinatorial properties of symmetric edge polytopes. We give a complete combinatorial description of their facets. By combining Gröbner basis techniques, half-open decompositions and methods for interlacing polynomials we provide an explicit formula for the $h^\ast$-polynomial in case of complete bipartite graphs. In particular, we show that the $h^\ast$-polynomial is $γ$-positive and real-rooted. This proves Gal's conjecture for arbitrary flag unimodular triangulations in this case, and, beyond that, we prove a strengthing due to Nevo and Petersen (2011).

math.CO↗

arXiv2018

Combinatorial positivity of translation-invariant valuations and a discrete Hadwiger theorem

We introduce the notion of combinatorial positivity of translation-invariant valuations on convex polytopes that extends the nonnegativity of Ehrhart h*-vectors. We give a surprisingly simple characterization of combinatorially positive valuations that implies Stanley's nonnegativity and monotonicity of h*-vectors and generalizes work of Beck et al. (2010) from solid-angle polynomials to all translation-invariant simple valuations. For general polytopes, this yields a new characterization of the volume as the unique combinatorially positive valuation up to scaling. For lattice polytopes our results extend work of Betke--Kneser (1985) and give a discrete Hadwiger theorem: There is essentially a unique combinatorially-positive basis for the space of lattice-invariant valuations. As byproducts of our investigations, we prove a multivariate Ehrhart-Macdonald reciprocity and we show universality of weight valuations studied in Beck et al. (2010).

math.CO↗

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↗