The boundary volume of a lattice polytope

Abstract

For a d-dimensional convex lattice polytope P, a formula for the boundary volume vol(?P) is derived in terms of the number of boundary lattice points on the first [d/2] dilations of P. As an application we give a necessary and sufficient condition for a polytope to be reflexive, and derive formulae for the f-vector of a smooth polytope in dimensions 3, 4, and 5. We also give applications to reflexive order polytopes, and to the Birkhoff polytope