Toric Rings and Ideals of Stable Set Polytopes

In the present paper, we study the normality of the toric rings of stable set polytopes, generators of toric ideals of stable set polytopes, and their Gröbner bases via the notion of edge polytopes of finite nonsimple graphs and the results on their toric ideals. In particular, we give a criterion for the normality of the toric ring of the stable set polytope and a graph-theoretical characterization of the set of generators of the toric ideal of the stable set polytope for a graph of stability number two. As an application, we provide an infinite family of stable set polytopes whose toric ideal is generated by quadratic binomials and has no quadratic Gröbner bases.

The Turán Polytope

The Turán hypergraph problem asks to find the maximum number of $r$-edges in a $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices that does not contain a clique of size $a$. When $r=2$, i.e., for graphs, the answer is well-known and can be found in Turán's theorem. However, when $r\ge 3$, the problem remains open. We model the problem as an integer program and call the underlying polytope the Turán polytope. We draw parallels between the latter and the stable set polytope: we show that generalized and transformed versions of the web and wheel inequalities are also facet-defining for the Turán polytope. We also show that clique inequalities and what we call doubling inequalities are facet-defining when $r=2$. These facets lead to a simple new polyhedral proof of Turán's theorem.