Minkowski Decomposition of Associahedra and Related Combinatorics

Realisations of associahedra with linearly non-isomorphic normal fans can be obtained by alteration of the right-hand sides of the facet-defining inequalities from a classical permutahedron. These polytopes can be expressed as Minkowski sums and differences of dilated faces of a standard simplex as described by Ardila, Benedetti & Doker (2010). The coefficients $y_I$ of such a Minkowski decomposition can be computed by M\"obius inversion if tight right-hand sides $z_I$ are known not just for the facet-defining inequalities of the associahedron but also for all inequalities of the permutahedron that are redundant for the associahedron. We show for certain families of these associahedra: (a) how to compute tight values $z_I$ for the redundant inequalities from the values $z_I$ for the facet-defining inequalities; (b) the computation of the values $y_I$ of Ardila, Benedetti & Doker can be significantly simplified and at most four values $z_{a(I)}$, $z_{b(I)}$, $z_{c(I)}$ and $z_{d(I)}$ are needed to compute $y_I$; (c) the four indices $a(I)$, $b(I)$, $c(I)$ and $d(I)$ are determined by the geometry of the normal fan of the associahedron and are described combinatorially; (d) a combinatorial interpretation of the values $y_I$ using a labeled $n$-gon. This last result is inspired from similar interpretations for vertex coordinates originally described originally by J.-L. Loday and well-known interpretations for the $z_I$-values of facet-defining inequalities.Comment: 30 pages; 21 figures; changed title; minor stylistic change

Associahedra via spines

An associahedron is a polytope whose vertices correspond to triangulations of a convex polygon and whose edges correspond to flips between them. Using labeled polygons, C. Hohlweg and C. Lange constructed various realizations of the associahedron with relevant properties related to the symmetric group and the classical permutahedron. We introduce the spine of a triangulation as its dual tree together with a labeling and an orientation. This notion extends the classical understanding of the associahedron via binary trees, introduces a new perspective on C. Hohlweg and C. Lange's construction closer to J.-L. Loday's original approach, and sheds light upon the combinatorial and geometric properties of the resulting realizations of the associahedron. It also leads to noteworthy proofs which shorten and simplify previous approaches.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures. Version 5: minor correction

Hochschild polytopes

The $(m,n)$-multiplihedron is a polytope whose faces correspond to $m$-painted $n$-trees, and whose oriented skeleton is the Hasse diagram of the rotation lattice on binary $m$-painted $n$-trees. Deleting certain inequalities from the facet description of the $(m,n)$-multiplihedron, we construct the $(m,n)$-Hochschild polytope whose faces correspond to $m$-lighted $n$-shades, and whose oriented skeleton is the Hasse diagram of the rotation lattice on unary $m$-lighted $n$-shades. Moreover, there is a natural shadow map from $m$-painted $n$-trees to $m$-lighted $n$-shades, which turns out to define a meet semilattice morphism of rotation lattices. In particular, when $m=1$, our Hochschild polytope is a deformed permutahedron whose oriented skeleton is the Hasse diagram of the Hochschild lattice.Comment: 32 pages, 25 figures, 7 tables. Version 2: Minor correction

Shard polytopes

For any lattice congruence of the weak order on permutations, N. Reading proved that gluing together the cones of the braid fan that belong to the same congruence class defines a complete fan, called a quotient fan, and V. Pilaud and F. Santos showed that it is the normal fan of a polytope, called a quotientope. In this paper, we provide a simpler approach to realize quotient fans based on Minkowski sums of elementary polytopes, called shard polytopes, which have remarkable combinatorial and geometric properties. In contrast to the original construction of quotientopes, this Minkowski sum approach extends to type $B$.Comment: 73 pages, 35 figures; Version 2: minor corrections for final versio