Spanning Lattice Polytopes and the Uniform Position Principle

Abstract

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.

14 pages; v2 revised manuscript, presentation improved