Geometry of ample/lopsided sets

Abstract

Lopsided sets were introduced by Jim Lawrence in 1983 when he studied the subsets of $\{-1,+1\}^E$ that encode the intersection pattern of a convex set $K$ with the orthants of ${\mathbb R}^E$. Lopsided sets have been independently rediscovered by several other authors, in particular by Andreas Dress in 1995, who called them \emph{ample} sets. Dress defined ample sets as the set families satisfying equality in a combinatorial inequality, which holds for all set families. In a previous article we characterized ample sets in various combinatorial and graph-theoretical ways. In this paper we study geometric realizations of ample sets as cubihedra (cube complexes), which yields several new characterizations. One such characterization establishes that the cubihedra of ample sets endowed with the intrinsic $\ell_1$-metric are exactly the isometric subspaces of $\ell_1$-spaces (which we call, weakly convex sets). We also view the barycenter maps of faces of cubihedra of ample sets as collections of $\{ \pm 1, 0\}$-sign vectors and, in analogy with the characterization of oriented matroids by the covectors and the cocircuits. Moreover, we characterize the collections of $\{ \pm 1, 0\}$-sign vectors corresponding to barycenter maps of all faces and all maximal faces of an ample set. Furthermore, we show that any ample set $\covectors\subseteq \{ -1,+1\}^E$ is realizable as the intersection pattern of a weakly convex set $K$ with the orthants of ${\mathbb R}^E$. All this testifies that the concept of ample sets is quite natural in the context of cube complexes.