Decomposition of polytopes and polynomials

Abstract. Motivated by a connection with the factorization of multivariable polynomials, we study integral convex polytopes and their integral decompositions in the sense of the Minkowski sum. We first show that deciding decomposability of integral polygons is NP-complete then present a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm for decomposing polygons. For higher dimensional polytopes, we give a heuristic algorithm which is based upon projections and uses randomization. Applications of our algorithms include absolute irreducibility testing and factorization of polynomials via their Newton polytopes.