Shelling the m=1 amplituhedron

Abstract: The amplituhedron

m a t h c a l A_{n, k, m}

was introduced by Arkani-Hamed and Trnka (2014) in order to give a geometric basis for calculating scattering amplitudes in planar

m a t h c a l N = 4

supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. It is a projection inside the Grassmannian

e x t {G r}_{k, k + m}

of the totally nonnegative part of

e x t {G r}_{k, n}

. Karp and Williams (2019) studied the

m = 1

amplituhedron

m a t h c a l A_{n, k, 1}

, giving a regular CW decomposition of it. Its face poset

R_{n, l}

(with

l := n - k - 1

) consists of all projective sign vectors of length

n

with exactly

l

sign changes. We show that

R_{n, l}

is EL-shellable, resolving a problem posed by Karp and Williams. This gives a new proof that

m a t h c a l A_{n, k, 1}

is homeomorphic to a closed ball, which was originally proved by Karp and Williams. We also give explicit formulas for the

f

-vector and

h

-vector of

R_{n, l}

, and show that it is rank-log-concave and strongly Sperner. Finally, we consider a related poset

P_{n, l}

introduced by Machacek (2019), consisting of all projective sign vectors of length

n

with at most

l

sign changes. We show that it is rank-log-concave, and conjecture that it is Sperner.

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