On Computing the Shadows and Slices of Polytopes

Abstract: We study the complexity of computing the projection of an arbitrary $d$-polytope along $k$ orthogonal vectors for various input and output forms. We show that if $d$ and $k$ are part of the input (i.e. not a constant) and we are interested in output-sensitive algorithms, then in most forms the problem is equivalent to enumerating vertices of polytopes, except in two where it is NP-hard. In two other forms the problem is trivial. We also review the complexity of computing projections when the projection directions are in some sense non-degenerate. For full-dimensional polytopes containing origin in the interior, projection is an operation dual to intersecting the polytope with a suitable linear subspace and so the results in this paper can be dualized by interchanging vertices with facets and projection with intersection. To compare the complexity of projection and vertex enumeration, we define new complexity classes based on the complexity of Vertex Enumeration.