Dyck path triangulations and extendability

Abstract

We introduce the Dyck path triangulation of the cartesian product of two simplices ${\Delta }_{n-1}\times {\Delta }_{n-1}$. The maximal simplices of this triangulation are given by Dyck paths, and its construction naturally generalizes to produce triangulations of ${\Delta }_{rn-1}\times {\Delta }_{n-1}$ using rational Dyck paths. Our study of the Dyck path triangulation is motivated by extendability problems of partial triangulations of products of two simplices. We show that whenever $m\ge k>n$, any triangulation of ${\Delta }_{m-1}^{(k-1)}\times {\Delta }_{n-1}$ extends to a unique triangulation of ${\Delta }_{m-1}\times {\Delta }_{n-1}$. Moreover, with an explicit construction, we prove that the bound $k>n$ is optimal. We also exhibit interesting interpretations of our results in the language of tropical oriented matroids, which are analogous to classical results in oriented matroid theory.

15 pages, 14 figures. Comments very welcome!

References in corpus (1)

• Results and conjectures on simultaneous core partitions