Partial permutohedra

Abstract

Partial permutohedra are lattice polytopes which were recently introduced and studied by Heuer and Striker. For positive integers $m$ and $n$, the partial permutohedron $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$ is the convex hull of all vectors in $\{0,1,\dots ,n{\}}^m$ whose nonzero entries are distinct. We study the face lattice, volume and Ehrhart polynomial of $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$, and our methods and results include the following. For any $m$ and $n$, we obtain a bijection between the nonempty faces of $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$ and certain chains of subsets of $\{1,\dots ,m\}$, thereby confirming a conjecture of Heuer and Striker, and we then use this characterization of faces to obtain a closed expression for the $h$-polynomial of $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$. For any $m$ and $n$ with $n\ge m-1$, we use a pyramidal subdivision of $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$ to establish a recursive formula for the normalized volume of $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$, from which we then obtain closed expressions for this volume. We also use a sculpting process (in which $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$ is reached by successively removing certain pieces from a simplex or hypercube) to obtain closed expressions for the Ehrhart polynomial of $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$ with arbitrary $m$ and fixed $n\le 3$, the normalized volume of $\mathcal{P}(m,4)$ with arbitrary $m$, and the Ehrhart polynomial of $\mathcal{P}(m,n)$ with fixed $m\le 4$ and arbitrary $n\ge m-1$.

42 pages, 5 figures. Final version, to appear in Discrete & Computational Geometry