Roots of Ehrhart polynomials and symmetric $\delta$-vectors

Abstract

The conjecture on roots of Ehrhart polynomials, stated by Matsui et al. \cite[Conjecture 4.10]{MHNOH}, says that all roots $\alpha$ of the Ehrhart polynomial of a Gorenstein Fano polytope of dimension $d$ satisfy $-\frac{d}{2} \leq \Re(\alpha) \leq \frac{d}{2} -1$. In this paper, we observe the behaviors of roots of SSNN polynomials which are a wider class of the polynomials containing all the Ehrhart polynomials of Gorenstein Fano polytopes. As a result, we verify that this conjecture is true when the roots are real numbers or when $d \leq 5$.