A quadratic upper bound on the Chv\'atal rank of polytopes in the 0/1-cube

Abstract

We show that every polytope $P\subseteq[0,1]^n$, and more generally every compact convex set, has Chv\'atal rank at most $12.22n^2+n\log_2 n+2n+4$. This improves the $O(n^2\log n)$ bound of Eisenbrand and Schulz and, together with the $\Omega(n^2)$ lower bound of Rothvo{\ss} and Sanit\`a, shows that the maximum Chv\'atal rank of a polytope in $[0,1]^n$ is $\Theta(n^2)$. More precisely, if $P$ contains an integer point, then for every $c\in\mathbb{Z}^n\setminus\{0\}$ the inequality $cx\le\max\{cy: y\in P\cap\mathbb{Z}^n\}$ is valid for the $k$-th Chv\'atal closure of $P$ for some $k\le 12.22n^2+2n+2\log_2\|c\|_\infty+4$. Following Eisenbrand and Schulz, we derive this inequality along a chain of coarser and coarser integer vectors, but instead of halving the vector in each step, we round $\tau c$ for a scale $\tau$ chosen freely in each dyadic window $[2^{-t-1},2^{-t}]$. The main new ingredient is a multiscale version of Dirichlet's approximation theorem, proved by an elementary volume argument: for every $c\in\mathbb{R}^n$, the $\ell_1$-distances of $\tau c$ to $\mathbb{Z}^n$, minimized within each dyadic window and summed over all windows, total less than $1.222n^2$, independently of $\|c\|_\infty$.