Additive number theory and inequalities in Ehrhart theory

Abstract

We introduce a powerful connection between Ehrhart theory and additive number theory, and use it to produce infinitely many new classes of inequalities between the coefficients of the $h^*$-polynomial of a lattice polytope. This greatly improves upon the three known classes of inequalities, which were proved using techniques from commutative algebra and combinatorics. As an application, we deduce all possible `balanced' inequalities between the coefficients of the $h^*$-polynomial of a lattice polytope containing an interior lattice point, in dimension at most 6.