On the duality operator of a convex cone

Let C be a convex set in Rⁿ. For each y?C, the cone of C at y, denoted by cone(y, C), is the cone {α(x ? y): α ? 0 and x?C}. If K is a cone in Rⁿ, we shall denote by $\text{K}{}^1$ its dual cone and by F(K) the lattice of faces of K. Then the duality operator of K is the mapping $\text{d}{}_{\mathrm{K}}\text{: F(K) → F(K}{}^1\text{)}$ given by $\text{d}{}_{\mathrm{K}}\text{(F) = (}\text{span}\text{F)}{}^{\mathrm{\perp }}\text{∩ K}{}^1$. Properties of the duality operator d_K of a closed, pointed, full cone K have been studied before. In this paper, we study d_K for a general cone K, especially in relation to d_{cone(y, K)}, where y?K. Our main result says that, for any closed cone K in Rⁿ, the duality operator d_K is injective (surjective) if and only if the duality operator d_{cone(y, K)} is injective (surjective) for each vector y?K ～ K ∩ (? K)]. In the last part of the paper, we obtain some partial results on the problem of constructing a compact convex set C, which contains the zero vector, such that cone (0, C) is equal to a given cone.