Almost simplicial polytopes: The lower and upper bound theorems (Extended Abstract)

This is an extended abstract of the full version. We study n-vertex d-dimensional polytopes with at most one nonsimplex facet with, say, d + s vertices, called almost simplicial polytopes. We provide tight lower and upper bounds for the face numbers of these polytopes as functions of d, n and s, thus generalizing the classical Lower Bound Theorem by Barnette and Upper Bound Theorem by McMullen, which treat the case s = 0. We characterize the minimizers and provide examples of maximizers, for any d.