Unimodality shenanigans in Ehrhart theory

Abstract

We show the existence of counterexamples to a four-decade-old conjecture attributed to Stanley concerning the unimodality of $h^*$-polynomials of IDP polytopes. As additional applications of our main constructions, we also disprove a conjecture by Brenti on the log-concavity of $h^*$-polynomials of Gorenstein IDP polytopes, and a conjecture by Ferroni and Higashitani concerning the log-concavity of the Ehrhart series of IDP polytopes. We also answer their question about the existence of very ample polytopes with non-log-concave interior Ehrhart series. Our class of examples arises by taking Cayley sums of rectangular prisms, and hence they possess regular unimodular flag triangulations by a result of Haase, Paffenholz, Piechnik and Santos. For the unimodality conjecture, we can even find smooth counterexamples.