Generalized Virtual Polytopes and Quasitoric Manifolds

We develop a theory of volume polynomials of generalized virtual polytopes based on the study of topology of affine subspace arrangements in a real Euclidean space. We apply this theory to obtain a topological version of the Bernstein–Kushnirenko theorem as well as Stanley–Reisner and Pukhlikov–Khovanskii type descriptions for the cohomology rings of generalized quasitoric manifolds.