The maximum number of faces of the Minkowski sum of three convex polytopes

Abstract

We derive tight expressions for the maximum number of $k$-faces, $0\le k\le d-1$, of the Minkowski sum, $P_1+P_2+P_3$, of three $d$-dimensional convex polytopes $P_1$, $P_2$ and $P_3$, as a function of the number of vertices of the polytopes, for any $d\ge 2$. Expressing the Minkowski sum of the three polytopes as a section of their Cayley polytope $\mathcal{C}$, the problem of counting the number of $k$-faces of $P_1+P_2+P_3$, reduces to counting the number of $(k+2)$-faces of the subset of $\mathcal{C}$ comprising of the faces that contain at least one vertex from each $P_i$. In two dimensions our expressions reduce to known results, while in three dimensions, the tightness of our bounds follows by exploiting known tight bounds for the number of faces of $r$ $d$-polytopes, where $r\ge d$. For $d\ge 4$, the maximum values are attained when $P_1$, $P_2$ and $P_3$ are $d$-polytopes, whose vertex sets are chosen appropriately from three distinct $d$-dimensional moment-like curves.