Combinatorial positivity of translation-invariant valuations and a discrete Hadwiger theorem

Abstract: We introduce the notion of combinatorial positivity of translation-invariant valuations on convex polytopes that extends the nonnegativity of Ehrhart h*-vectors. We give a surprisingly simple characterization of combinatorially positive valuations that implies Stanley's nonnegativity and monotonicity of h*-vectors and generalizes work of Beck et al. (2010) from solid-angle polynomials to all translation-invariant simple valuations. For general polytopes, this yields a new characterization of the volume as the unique combinatorially positive valuation up to scaling. For lattice polytopes our results extend work of Betke--Kneser (1985) and give a discrete Hadwiger theorem: There is essentially a unique combinatorially-positive basis for the space of lattice-invariant valuations. As byproducts of our investigations, we prove a multivariate Ehrhart-Macdonald reciprocity and we show universality of weight valuations studied in Beck et al. (2010).