Castelnuovo Polytopes

Abstract

It is known that the sectional genus of a polarized variety has an upper bound, which is an extension of the Castelnuovo bound on the genus of a projective curve. Polarized varieties whose sectional genus achieve this bound are called Castelnuovo. On the other hand, a lattice polytope is called Castelnuovo if the associated polarized toric variety is Castelnuovo. Kawaguchi characterized Castelnuovo polytopes having interior lattice points in terms of their ${\mathit{h}}^{\ast }$-vectors. In this paper, as a generalization of this result, we present a characterization of all Castelnuovo polytopes. Finally, as an application of our characterization, we give a sufficient criterion for a lattice polytope to be IDP.