Fiber polytopes for the projections between cyclic polytopes

The cyclic polytope $C(n,d)$ is the convex hull of any $n$ points on the moment curve ${(t,t^2,...,t^d):t \in \reals}$ in $\reals^d$. For $d' >d$, we consider the fiber polytope (in the sense of Billera and Sturmfels) associated to the natural projection of cyclic polytopes $\pi: C(n,d') \to C(n,d)$ which "forgets" the last $d'-d$ coordinates. It is known that this fiber polytope has face lattice indexed by the coherent polytopal subdivisions of $C(n,d)$ which are induced by the map $\pi$. Our main result characterizes the triples $(n,d,d')$ for which the fiber polytope is canonical in either of the following two senses: - all polytopal subdivisions induced by $\pi$ are coherent, - the structure of the fiber polytope does not depend upon the choice of points on the moment curve. We also discuss a new instance with a positive answer to the Generalized Baues Problem, namely that of a projection $\pi:P\to Q$ where $Q$ has only regular subdivisions and $P$ has two more vertices than its dimension.Comment: 28 pages with 1 postscript figur

Combinatorial Convexity and Algebraic Geometry

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Hypersimplicial subdivisions

Let π:Rn→Rd be any linear projection, let A be the image of the standard basis. Motivated by Postnikov’s study of postitive Grassmannians via plabic graphs and Galashin’s connection of plabic graphs to slices of zonotopal tilings of 3-dimensional cyclic zonotopes, we study the poset of subdivisions induced by the restriction of π to the k-th hypersimplex, for k=1,…,n−1 . We show that: For arbitrary A and for k≤d+1 , the corresponding fiber polytope F(k)(A) is normally isomorphic to the Minkowski sum of the secondary polytopes of all subsets of A of size max{d+2,n−k+1} . When A=Pn is the vertex set of an n-gon, we answer the Baues question in the positive: the inclusion of the poset of π -coherent subdivisions into the poset of all π -induced subdivisions is a homotopy equivalence. When A=C(d,n) is the vertex set of a cyclic d-polytope with d odd and any n≥d+3, there are non-lifting (and even more so, non-separated) π -induced subdivisions for k=2.The authors were supported by the Einstein Foundation Berlin under grant EVF-2015-230. Work of F. Santos is also supported by grants MTM2017-83750-P/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and PID2019-106188GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 of the Spanish State Research Agency