Almost Simplicial Polytopes: The Lower and Upper Bound Theorems

We study -vertex -dimensional polytopes with at most one nonsimplex facet with, say, vertices, called almost simplicial polytopes. We provide tight lower and upper bound theorems for these polytopes as functions of, and, thus generalizing the classical Lower Bound Theorem by Barnette and the Upper Bound Theorem by McMullen, which treat the case where s = 0. We characterize the minimizers and provide examples of maximizers for any. Our construction of maximizers is a generalization of cyclic polytopes, based on a suitable variation of the moment curve, and is of independent interest.