Monotone paths on polytopes (Q1591406)

This article is of broad potential interest. It concerns the connectivity of the graph of monotone paths on a polytope, and is therefore related to the generalized Baues problem, and to fiber polytopes. The article contains two separate results. Let \(P\) be a \(d\)-polytope, and let \(f\) be a linear functional which is ``generic'' in the sense that it is not constant on any edge of \(P\). Then \(f\) defines a minimal and a maximal vertex of \(P\). An \(f\)-monotone path is a path from the minimal to the maximal vertex, along the edges of \(P\), along which \(f\) is strictly increasing. Given two \(f\)-monotone paths, they are said to differ by a polygon flip if they are identical everywhere except on a single \(2\)-face of the polytope. The graph \(G(P,f)\) of \(f\)-monotone paths on \(P\) is the graph whose vertices are the \(f\)-monotone paths, and whose edges are pairs of monotone paths which differ from each other by a polygon flip. The first result of the article is that this graph \(G(P,f)\) is always at least \(2\)-connected, and that examples exist (for any dimension \(d\)) which are not \(3\)-connected. This contradicts a conjecture by one of the authors that for \(d\)-polytopes, \(G(P,f)\) would always be \((d-1)\)-connected. The authors pose some questions which spring naturally from these results. The second result of the article deals with the Baues conjecture for cellular strings on convex polytopes, which concerns the homotopy theory of generalized loop spaces. The conjecture was previously proven by \textit{A. Björner} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 116, No. 4, 1179-1181 (1992; Zbl 0778.05089)]. This article shows that convexity is not a necessary condition, by showing that shellability is sufficient, and noting that convexity implies shellability.