Rational Simplicial geometry and projective unital lattice-ordered abelian groups

Abstract: A unital $\ell$-group is an abelian group equipped with a translation invariant lattice-order and with a distinguished strong unit, i.e. an element whose positive integer multiples eventually dominate every element of $G$.If $X$ is a compact subset of $R^n$, the set $M(X)$ of real-valued piecewise linear maps with integer coefficients, whose addition and lattice operations defined pointwise and whose distinguished element is the constant map $1$, is a unital $\ell$-group. In this paper we provide a geometric decription of finitely generated (regular) projective unital $\ell$-groups. We prove that a finitely unital $\ell$-group is projective if and only if it is isomorphic to $M(P)$ for some polyhedron $P$ which is rational, contractible, contains an integer point, and satisfies an elementary arithmetical-topological property.