Polygon dissections and some generalizations of cluster complexes

Let $W$ be a Weyl group corresponding to the root system $A_{n-1}$ or $B_n$. We define a simplicial complex $\Delta^m_W$ in terms of polygon dissections for such a group and any positive integer $m$. For $m=1$, $\Delta^m_W$ is isomorphic to the cluster complex corresponding to $W$, defined in \cite{FZ}. We enumerate the faces of $\Delta^m_W$ and show that the entries of its $h$-vector are given by the generalized Narayana numbers $N^m_W(i)$, defined in \cite{Atha3}. We also prove that for any $m \geq 1$ the complex $\Delta^m_W$ is shellable and hence Cohen-Macaulay.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, the type D case has been removed, some corrections on the proof of Theorem 3.1 have been made. To appear in JCT

Geometric realizations of the accordion complex of a dissection

Consider $2n$ points on the unit circle and a reference dissection $\mathrm{D}_\circ$ of the convex hull of the odd points. The accordion complex of $\mathrm{D}_\circ$ is the simplicial complex of non-crossing subsets of the diagonals with even endpoints that cross a connected subset of diagonals of $\mathrm{D}_\circ$. In particular, this complex is an associahedron when $\mathrm{D}_\circ$ is a triangulation and a Stokes complex when $\mathrm{D}_\circ$ is a quadrangulation. In this paper, we provide geometric realizations (by polytopes and fans) of the accordion complex of any reference dissection $\mathrm{D}_\circ$, generalizing known constructions arising from cluster algebras.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures; Version 3: minor correction

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

Alexander Duality and Rational Associahedra

A recent pair of papers of Armstrong, Loehr, and Warrington and Armstrong, Williams, and the author initiated the systematic study of {\em rational Catalan combinatorics} which is a generalization of Fuss-Catalan combinatorics (which is in turn a generalization of classical Catalan combinatorics). The latter paper gave two possible models for a rational analog of the associahedron which attach simplicial complexes to any pair of coprime positive integers a < b. These complexes coincide up to the Fuss-Catalan level of generality, but in general one may be a strict subcomplex of the other. Verifying a conjecture of Armstrong, Williams, and the author, we prove that these complexes agree up to homotopy and, in fact, that one complex collapses onto the other. This reconciles the two competing models for rational associahedra. As a corollary, we get that the involution (a < b) \longleftrightarrow (b-a < b) on pairs of coprime positive integers manifests itself topologically as Alexander duality of rational associahedra. This collapsing and Alexander duality are new features of rational Catalan combinatorics which are invisible at the Fuss-Catalan level of generality.Comment: 23 page

Dissections, Hom-complexes and the Cayley trick

We show that certain canonical realizations of the complexes Hom(G,H) and Hom_+(G,H) of (partial) graph homomorphisms studied by Babson and Kozlov are in fact instances of the polyhedral Cayley trick. For G a complete graph, we then characterize when a canonical projection of these complexes is itself again a complex, and exhibit several well-known objects that arise as cells or subcomplexes of such projected Hom-complexes: the dissections of a convex polygon into k-gons, Postnikov's generalized permutohedra, staircase triangulations, the complex dual to the lower faces of a cyclic polytope, and the graph of weak compositions of an integer into a fixed number of summands.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures; improved exposition; accepted for publication in JCT