English

Cambrian fans

Combinatorics 2026-05-13 v2

Abstract

For a finite Coxeter group W and a Coxeter element c of W, the c-Cambrian fan is a coarsening of the fan defined by the reflecting hyperplanes of W. Its maximal cones are naturally indexed by the c-sortable elements of W. The main result of this paper is that the known bijection cl_c between c-sortable elements and c-clusters induces a combinatorial isomorphism of fans. In particular, the c-Cambrian fan is combinatorially isomorphic to the normal fan of the generalized associahedron for W. The rays of the c-Cambrian fan are generated by certain vectors in the W-orbit of the fundamental weights, while the rays of the c-cluster fan are generated by certain roots. For particular ("bipartite") choices of c, we show that the c-Cambrian fan is linearly isomorphic to the c-cluster fan. We characterize, in terms of the combinatorics of clusters, the partial order induced, via the map cl_c, on c-clusters by the c-Cambrian lattice. We give a simple bijection from c-clusters to c-noncrossing partitions that respects the refined (Narayana) enumeration. We relate the Cambrian fan to well known objects in the theory of cluster algebras, providing a geometric context for g-vectors and quasi-Cartan companions.

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0606201,
  title  = {Cambrian fans},
  author = {Nathan Reading and David E Speyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0606201},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Substantial revisions, mostly of an expository nature, in response to suggestions of the referees. This is the final version which will appear in the Journal of the European Mathematical Society (JEMS). 38 pages, 7 figures