We conduct a systematic study of the Ehrhart theory of certain slices of rectangular prisms. Our polytopes are generalizations of the hypersimplex and are contained in the larger class of polypositroids introduced by Lam and Postnikov; moreover, they coincide with polymatroids satisfying the strong exchange property up to an affinity. We give a combinatorial formula for all the Ehrhart coefficients in terms of the number of weighted permutations satisfying certain compatibility properties. This result proves that all these polytopes are Ehrhart positive. Additionally, via an extension of a result by Early and Kim, we give a combinatorial interpretation for all the coefficients of the $h^*$-polynomial. All of our results provide a combinatorial understanding of the Hilbert functions and the h-vectors of all algebras of Veronese type, a problem that had remained elusive up to this point. A variety of applications are discussed, including expressions for the volumes of these slices of prisms as weighted combinations of Eulerian numbers; some extensions of Laplace’s result on the combinatorial interpretation of the volume of the hypersimplex; a multivariate generalization of the flag Eulerian numbers and refinements; and a short proof of the Ehrhart positivity of the independence polytope of all uniform matroids.

Let G be a complex classical group, and let V be its defining representation (possibly plus a copy of the dual). A foundational problem in classical invariant theory is to write down generators and relations for the ring of G-invariant polynomial functions on the space $\mathcal P^m(V)$ of degree-m homogeneous polynomial functions on V. In this paper, we replace $\mathcal P^m(V)$ with the full polynomial algebra $\mathcal P(V)$. As a result, the invariant ring is no longer finitely generated. Hence, instead of seeking generators, we aim to write down linear bases for bigraded components. Indeed, when G is of sufficiently high rank, we realize these bases as sets of graphs with prescribed number of vertices and edges. When the rank of G is small, there arise complicated linear dependencies among the graphs, but we remedy this setback via representation theory: in particular, we determine the dimension of an arbitrary component in terms of branching multiplicities from the general linear group to the symmetric group. We thereby obtain an expression for the bigraded Hilbert series of the ring of invariants on $\mathcal P(V)$. We conclude with examples using our graphical notation, several of which recover classical results.

We give explicit formulas for the Hilbert series of residual intersections of a scheme in terms of the Hilbert series of its conormal modules. In a previous paper, we proved that such formulas should exist. We give applications to the number of equations defining projective varieties and to the dimension of secant varieties of surfaces and three-folds.

In this paper we determine the possible Hilbert functions of a Cohen--Macaulay local ring of dimension $d$ and multiplicity $e$, in the case where the embedding dimension $v$ satisfies $v=e+d-3$ and the Cohen--Macaulay type is less than or equal to $e-3$.

1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: primary 13D40; secondary 13P99.