Support-minimal rays of a nonnegative kernel
ID: support-minimal-rays-of-a-nonnegative-kernel
Every nonzero vector of is a nonnegative combination of at most as many support-minimal vectors as it has nonzero coordinates. Choose a nonnegative kernel vector of minimal nonempty support inside the support of ; subtract , where . The remainder is nonnegative, remains in the kernel, and has strictly smaller support. Induction proves the decomposition. On a minimal support, the kernel is one-dimensional: an independent kernel direction could perturb a strictly positive vector to the boundary of that support without making it zero, contradicting minimality. For an integer matrix with entries bounded by , cofactor determinants give an integer generator with coordinates bounded by , where is the ambient number of coordinates.
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