On the connected blocks polytope

Abstract

In this paper, we study the connected blocks polytope, which, apart from its own merits, can be seen as the generalization of certain connectivity based or Eulerian subgraph polytopes. We provide a complete facet description of this polytope, characterize its edges and show that it is Hirsch. We also show that connected blocks polytopes admit a regular unimodular triangulation by constructing a squarefree Gröbner basis. In addition, we prove that the polytope is Gorenstein of index $2$ and that its $h^{\ast }$-vector is unimodal.