Ehrhart polynomials, simplicial polytopes, magic squares and a conjecture of Stanley

Abstract

It is proved that a certain symmetric sequence of nonnegative integers arising in the enumeration of magic squares of given size n by row sums or, equivalently, in the generating function of the Ehrhart polynomial of the polytope of doubly stochastic n by n matrices, is equal to the h-vector of a simplicial polytope and hence that it satisfies the conditions of the g-theorem. The unimodality of this sequance, which follows, was conjectured by Stanley (1983). Several generalizations are given.