Associahedron, cyclohedron and permutohedron as compactifications of configuration spaces (Q983863)

It is well-known that associahedra and cyclohedra can be defined as compactifications of configuration spaces. The authors show how the permutohedron can also be defined as an appropriate compactification of a configuration space of points on an interval or on a circle. The construction of the compactification endows the permutohedron with a projection to the cyclohedron, and the cyclohedron with a projection to the associahedron. The authors show that the preimages of any point via these projections might not be homeomorphic to a disk, but are still contractible. They also briefly explain an application of this result to the study of knot spaces from the point of view of the Goodwillie-Weiss manifold calculus.