English

Quantitative Steinitz theorem and polarity

Metric Geometry 2025-05-13 v3

Abstract

The classical Steinitz theorem asserts that if the origin lies within the interior of the convex hull of a set SRdS \subset \mathbb{R}^d, then there are at most 2d2d points in SS whose convex hull contains the origin within its interior. B\'ar\'any, Katchalski, and Pach established a quantitative version of Steinitz's theorem, showing that for a convex polytope QQ in Rd\mathbb{R}^d containing the standard Euclidean unit ball Bd\mathbf{B}^d, there exist at most 2d2d vertices of QQ whose convex hull QQ' satisfies rBdQr\mathbf{B}^d \subset Q' with rd2dr \geq d^{-2d}. Recently, M\'arton Nasz\'odi and the author derived a polynomial bound on rr. This paper aims to establish a bound on rr based on the number of vertices of Q.Q. In other words, we demonstrate an effective method to remove several points from the original set QQ without significantly altering the bound on rr. Specifically, if the number of vertices of QQ scales linearly with the dimension, i.e., αd\alpha d, then one can select 2d2d vertices such that r15αdr \geq \frac{1}{5 \alpha d}. The proof relies on a polarity trick, which may be of independent interest: we demonstrate the existence of a point cc in the interior of a convex polytope PRdP \subset \mathbb{R}^d such that the vertices of the polar polytope (Pc)(P-c)^\circ sum up to zero.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2403.14761,
  title  = {Quantitative Steinitz theorem and polarity},
  author = {Grigory Ivanov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.14761},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T15:29:11.166Z