Colorful Associahedra and Cyclohedra

Every n-edge colored n-regular graph G naturally gives rise to a simple abstract n-polytope, the colorful polytope of G, whose 1-skeleton is isomorphic to G. The paper describes colorful polytope versions of the associahedron and cyclohedron. Like their classical counterparts, the colorful associahedron and cyclohedron encode triangulations and flips, but now with the added feature that the diagonals of the triangulations are colored and adjacency of triangulations requires color preserving flips. The colorful associahedron and cyclohedron are derived as colorful polytopes from the edge colored graph whose vertices represent these triangulations and whose colors on edges represent the colors of flipped diagonals.Comment: 21 pp, to appear in Journal Combinatorial Theory

On signed diagonal flip sequences

Eliahou \cite{2} and Kryuchkov \cite{9} conjectured a proposition that Gravier and Payan \cite{4} proved to be equivalent to the Four Color Theorem. It states that any triangulation of a polygon can be transformed into another triangulation of the same polygon by a sequence of signed diagonal flips. It is well known that any pair of polygonal triangulations are connected by a sequence of (non-signed) diagonal flips. In this paper we give a sufficient and necessary condition for a diagonal flip sequence to be a signed diagonal flip sequence.Comment: 11 pages, 24 figures, to appear in European Journal of Combinatoric

A new Kempe invariant and the (non)-ergodicity of the Wang-Swendsen-Kotecky algorithm

We prove that for the class of three-colorable triangulations of a closed oriented surface, the degree of a four-coloring modulo 12 is an invariant under Kempe changes. We use this general result to prove that for all triangulations T(3L,3M) of the torus with 3<= L <= M, there are at least two Kempe equivalence classes. This result implies in particular that the Wang-Swendsen-Kotecky algorithm for the zero-temperature 4-state Potts antiferromagnet on these triangulations T(3L,3M) of the torus is not ergodic.Comment: 37 pages (LaTeX2e). Includes tex file and 3 additional style files. The tex file includes 14 figures using pstricks.sty. Minor changes. Version published in J. Phys.

Note on the Irreducible Triangulations of the Klein Bottle

We give the complete list of the 29 irreducible triangulations of the Klein bottle. We show how the construction of Lawrencenko and Negami, which listed only 25 such irreducible triangulations, can be modified at two points to produce the 4 additional irreducible triangulations of the Klein bottle.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B. Section 3 expande

Asymptotically efficient triangulations of the d-cube

Let $P$ and $Q$ be polytopes, the first of "low" dimension and the second of "high" dimension. We show how to triangulate the product $P \times Q$ efficiently (i.e., with few simplices) starting with a given triangulation of $Q$. Our method has a computational part, where we need to compute an efficient triangulation of $P \times \Delta^m$, for a (small) natural number $m$ of our choice. $\Delta^m$ denotes the $m$-simplex. Our procedure can be applied to obtain (asymptotically) efficient triangulations of the cube $I^n$: We decompose $I^n = I^k \times I^{n-k}$, for a small $k$. Then we recursively assume we have obtained an efficient triangulation of the second factor and use our method to triangulate the product. The outcome is that using $k=3$ and $m=2$, we can triangulate $I^n$ with $O(0.816^{n} n!)$ simplices, instead of the $O(0.840^{n} n!)$ achievable before.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures. Only minor changes from previous versions, some suggested by anonymous referees. Paper accepted in "Discrete and Computational Geometry

Multi-triangulations as complexes of star polygons

Maximal $(k+1)$-crossing-free graphs on a planar point set in convex position, that is, $k$-triangulations, have received attention in recent literature, with motivation coming from several interpretations of them. We introduce a new way of looking at $k$-triangulations, namely as complexes of star polygons. With this tool we give new, direct, proofs of the fundamental properties of $k$-triangulations, as well as some new results. This interpretation also opens-up new avenues of research, that we briefly explore in the last section.Comment: 40 pages, 24 figures; added references, update Section