English

Cyclopermutohedron

Metric Geometry 2014-11-11 v3 Combinatorics

Abstract

It is known that the kk-faces of the permutohedron Πn\Pi_n are labeled by (all possible) linearly ordered partitions of the set [n]={1,...,n}[n]=\{1,...,n\} into (nk)(n-k) non-empty parts. The incidence relation corresponds to the refinement: a face FF contains a face FF' whenever the label of FF' refines the label of FF. In the paper we consider the cell complex CP{CP} defined in analogous way, replacing linear ordering by cyclic ordering. Namely, kk-cells of the complex CP{CP} are labeled by (all possible) cyclically ordered partitions of the set [n+1]={1,...,n,n+1}[n+1]=\{1,...,n, n+1\} into (n+1k)(n+1-k) non-empty parts, where (n+1k)>2(n+1-k)>2. The incidence relation again corresponds to the refinement: a cell FF contains a cell FF' whenever the label of FF' refines the label of FF. In particular, two vertices are joined by an edge whenever their labels differ on a permutation of two neighbor elements. The complex CP{CP} cannot be represented by a convex polytope, since it is not a combinatorial sphere (not even a combinatorial manifold). However, it can be represented by some \textit{virtual polytope} (Minkowski difference of two convex polytopes) which we call "cyclopermutohedron" CPn+1\mathcal{CP}_{n+1}. It is defined explicitly, as a weighted Minkowski sum of line segments. Informally, the cyclopermutohedron can be viewed as "permutohedron with diagonals". One of the motivations is that the cyclopermutohedron is a "universal" polytope for moduli spaces of polygonal linkages.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.7476,
  title  = {Cyclopermutohedron},
  author = {Gaiane Panina},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.7476},
  year   = {2014}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:56:58.691Z