Vertex generated polytopes

Abstract

In this paper we define and investigate a class of polytopes which we call "vertex generated" consisting of polytopes which are the average of their $0$ and $n$ dimensional faces. We show many results regarding this class, among them: that the class contains all zonotopes, that it is dense in dimension $n=2$, that any polytope can be summed with a zonotope so that the sum is in this class, and that a strong form of the celebrated "Maurey Lemma" holds for polytopes in this class. We introduce for every polytope a parameter which measures how far it is from being vertex-generated, and show that when this parameter is small, strong covering properties hold.