English

A proof of Lov\'asz's theorem on maximal lattice-free sets

Optimization and Control 2011-10-06 v1 Combinatorics Metric Geometry

Abstract

Let KK be a maximal lattice-free set in Rd\mathbb{R}^d, that is, KK is convex and closed subset of Rd\mathbb{R}^d, the interior of KK does not cointain points of Zd\mathbb{Z}^d and KK is inclusion-maximal with respect to the above properties. A result of Lov\'asz assert that if KK is dd-dimensional, then KK is a polyhedron with at most 2d2^d facets, and the recession cone of KK is spanned by vectors from Zd\mathbb{Z}^d. A first complete proof of mentioned Lov\'asz's result has been published in a paper of Basu, Conforti, Cornu\'ejols and Zambelli (where the authors use Dirichlet's approximation as a tool). The aim of this note is to give another proof of this result. Our proof relies on Minkowki's first fundamental theorem from the gemetry of numbers. We remark that the result of Lov\'asz is relevant in integer and mixed-integer optimization.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1110.1014,
  title  = {A proof of Lov\'asz's theorem on maximal lattice-free sets},
  author = {Gennadiy Averkov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1110.1014},
  year   = {2011}
}