Signed tree associahedra

Abstract

An associahedron is a polytope whose vertices correspond to the triangulations of a convex polygon and whose edges correspond to flips between them. A particularly elegant realization of the associahedron, due to S. Shnider and S. Sternberg and popularized by J.-L. Loday, has been generalized in two directions: on the one hand by A. Postnikov to obtain a realization of the graph associahedra of M. Carr and S. Devadoss, and on the other hand by C. Hohlweg and C. Lange to obtain multiple realizations of the associahedron parametrized by a sequence of signs. The goal of this paper is to unify and extend these two constructions to signed tree associahedra. We define the notions of signed tubes and signed nested sets on a vertex-signed tree, generalizing the classical notions of tubes and nested sets for unsigned trees. The resulting signed nested complexes are all simplicial spheres, but they are not necessarily isomorphic, even if they arise from signed trees with the same underlying unsigned structure. We then construct a signed tree associahedron realizing the signed nested complex, obtained by removing certain well-chosen facets from the classical permutahedron. We study relevant properties of its normal fan and of certain orientations of its 1-skeleton, in connection to the braid arrangement and to the weak order. Our main tool, both for combinatorial and geometric perspectives, is the notion of spines on a vertex-signed tree, which extend the families of Schröder and binary search trees.