Weighted lattice point sums in lattice polytopes, unifying Dehn--Sommerville and Ehrhart--Macdonald

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified generating function for weighted lattice point sums in lattice polytopes, generalizing classical reciprocity laws and relations, with computational methods for simple polytopes.

Contribution

It develops a new generating function that unifies Dehn--Sommerville and Ehrhart--Macdonald relations, extending lattice point enumeration techniques.

Findings

The generating function satisfies a functional equation generalizing classical reciprocity.

For simple polytopes, an analogue of Euler--Maclaurin summation computes the generating function.

The approach unifies geometric and combinatorial properties of lattice polytopes.

Abstract

Let $V$ be a real vector space of dimension $n$ and let $M\subset V$ be a lattice. Let $P\subset V$ be an $n$-dimensional polytope with vertices in $M$, and let $\varphi\colon V\rightarrow \CC $ be a homogeneous polynomial function of degree $d$ (i.e., an element of $\Sym^{d} (V^{*})$). For $q\in \ZZ_{>0}$ and any face $F$ of $P$, let $D_{\varphi ,F} (q)$ be the sum of $\varphi$ over the lattice points in the dilate $qF$. We define a generating function $G_{\varphi}(q,y) \in \QQ [q] [y]$ packaging together the various $D_{\varphi ,F} (q)$, and show that it satisfies a functional equation that simultaneously generalizes Ehrhart--Macdonald reciprocity and the Dehn--Sommerville relations. When $P$ is a simple lattice polytope (i.e., each vertex meets $n$ edges), we show how $G_{\varphi}$ can be computed using an analogue of Brion--Vergne's Euler--Maclaurin summation formula.