English

Flow polytopes with Catalan volumes

Combinatorics 2016-12-02 v1

Abstract

The Chan-Robbins-Yuen polytope can be thought of as the flow polytope of the complete graph with netflow vector (1,0,,0,1)(1, 0, \ldots, 0, -1). The normalized volume of the Chan-Robbins-Yuen polytope equals the product of consecutive Catalan numbers, yet there is no combinatorial proof of this fact. We consider a natural generalization of this polytope, namely, the flow polytope of the complete graph with netflow vector (1,1,0,,0,2)(1,1, 0, \ldots, 0, -2). We show that the volume of this polytope is a certain power of 22 times the product of consecutive Catalan numbers. Our proof uses constant term identities and further deepens the combinatorial mystery of why these numbers appear. In addition we introduce two more families of flow polytopes whose volumes are given by product formulas.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.00102,
  title  = {Flow polytopes with Catalan volumes},
  author = {Sylvie Corteel and Jang Soo Kim and Karola Mészáros},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.00102},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

16 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:10:11.897Z