THE BOUNDARY VOLUME OF A LATTICE POLYTOPE

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 formulas for the f-vector of a smooth polytope in dimensions three, four, and five. We also give applications to reflexive order polytopes, and to the Birkhoff polytope.