Syntactic aspects of hypergraph polytopes

Hypergraphs (05C65) Combinatorial properties of polytopes and polyhedra (number of faces, shortest paths, etc.) (52B05) Loop space machines and operads in algebraic topology (55P48)

Abstract: This paper introduces an inductively defined tree notation for all the faces of polytopes arising from a simplex by truncations. This notation allows us to view inclusion of faces as the process of contracting tree edges. Our notation instantiates to the well-known notations for the faces of associahedra and permutohedra. Various authors have independently introduced combinatorial tools for describing such polytopes. We build on the particular approach developed by Dosen and Petric, who used the formalism of hypergraphs to describe the interval of polytopes from the simplex to the permutohedron. This interval was further stretched by Petric to allow truncations of faces that are themselves obtained by truncations, and iteratively so. Our notation applies to all these polytopes. We illustrate this by showing that it instantiates to a notation for the faces of the permutohedron-based associahedra, that consists of parenthesised words with holes. Dosen and Petric have exhibited some families of hypergraph polytopes (associahedra, permutohedra, and hemiassociahedra) describing the coherences, and the coherences between coherences etc., arising by weakening sequential and parallel associativity of operadic composition. We complement their work with a criterion allowing us to recover the information whether edges of these "operadic polytopes" come from sequential, or from parallel associativity. We also give alternative proofs for some of the original results of Dosen and Petric.

Review text

\textit{K. Došen} and \textit{Z. Petrić} [Topology Appl. 158, No. 12, 1405--1444 (2011; Zbl 1222.05193)] considered a family of polytopes that can be obtained by truncating the vertices, edges and other faces of simplices of any finite dimension. This kind of polytopes are called hypergraph polytopes or nestohedra. In particular, the permutohedra are obtained by making all the possible truncations. The faces of hypergraph polytopes are named by combinatorial objects called constructs or nested sets. In [loc. cit.], it is proved that there is an isomorphism between the poset of constructs and the poset of faces in the geometric realisation of the polytope. Originally, the constructs were defined as certain sets of connected subsets of a hypergraph. In the paper under review, the authors give them an equivalent definition as decorated trees obtained in an algorithmic manner. They also give an alternative, constructive proof for the isomorphism result of Došen and Petrić [loc. cit.]. As an application, they present a criterion to determine whether edges of polytopes associated with the coherences of categorified operads correspond to sequential or to parallel associativity.

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