A New Invariant of Lattice polytopes

Abstract

The maximal degree of monomials belonging to the unique minimal system of monomial generators of the canonical module $\omega (K[\mathcal{P}])$ of the toric ring $K[\mathcal{P}]$ defined by a lattice polytope $\mathcal{P}$ will be studied. It is shown that if $\mathcal{P}$ possesses an interior lattice point, then the maximal degree is at most $\dim \mathcal{P}-1$, and that this bound is the best possible in general.