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On the Log-Concavity of Hilbert Series of Veronese Subrings and Ehrhart Series

For every positive integer $n$, consider the linear operator $\U_{n}$ on polynomials of degree at most $d$ with integer coefficients defined as follows: if we write $\frac{h(t)}{(1 - t)^{d + 1}} = \sum_{m \geq 0} g(m) t^{m}$, for some polynomial $g(m)$ with rational coefficients, then $\frac{\U_{n}h(t)}{(1- t)^{d + 1}} = \sum_{m \geq 0} g(nm) t^{m}$. We show that there exists a positive integer $n_{d}$, depending only on $d$, such that if $h(t)$ is a polynomial of degree at most $d$ with nonnegative integer coefficients and $h(0) \geq 1$, then for $n \geq n_{d}$, $\U_{n}h(t)$ has simple, real, strictly negative roots and positive, strictly log concave and strictly unimodal coefficients. Applications are given to Ehrhart $δ$-polynomials and unimodular triangulations of dilations of lattice polytopes, as well as Hilbert series of Veronese subrings of Cohen--MacCauley graded rings.