Normal fan

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In mathematics, specifically convex geometry, the normal fan of a convex polytope P is a polyhedral fan that is dual to P. Normal fans have applications to polyhedral combinatorics, linear programming, tropical geometry and other areas of mathematics.

Contents

Definition

Given a convex polytope P in Rn, the normal fan NP of P is a polyhedral fan in the dual space, (Rn)* whose cones consist of the normal coneCF to each face F of P,

Each normal cone CF is defined as the set of linear functionals w such that the set of points x in P that maximize w(x) contains F,

Properties

where H is the smallest face of P that contains both F and G.

Applications

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