Monotone Paths on Zonotopes and Oriented Matroids

http://dx.doi.org/10.4153/CJM-2001-042-3
Canad. J. Math. 53(2001), 1121-1140

  Published:2001-12-01
 Printed: Dec 2001

Monotone paths on zonotopes and the natural generalization to maximal chains in the poset of topes of an oriented matroid or arrangement of pseudo-hyperplanes are studied with respect to a kind of local move, called polygon move or flip. It is proved that any monotone path on a $d$-dimensional zonotope with $n$ generators admits at least $\lceil 2n/(n-d+2) \rceil-1$ flips for all $n \ge d+2 \ge 4$ and that for any fixed value of $n-d$, this lower bound is sharp for infinitely many values of $n$. In particular, monotone paths on zonotopes which admit only three flips are constructed in each dimension $d \ge 3$. Furthermore, the previously known 2-connectivity of the graph of monotone paths on a polytope is extended to the 2-connectivity of the graph of maximal chains of topes of an oriented matroid. An application in the context of Coxeter groups of a result known to be valid for monotone paths on simple zonotopes is included.