Go to: Associahedron and associator identities · Publications and Preprints · Markus Rost's Web Page


The Loday realization of the associahedron (projections)

Here are affine projections to the plane of the Loday realization of the 3-dimensional associahedron as a polytope.

The first image is simply the result of a first attempt.

The second image is close to the drawing at the end of Loday's paper [Loday, Jean-Louis. Realization of the Stasheff polytope. Arch. Math. 83, no. 3, 267-278, 2004. MR 2108555, Zbl 1059.52017].

An affine projection of Loday's associahedronLoday's projection of Loday's associahedron

The third image is the orthogonal projection to a particular face (the pentagon in front). The 2-dimensional sub-associahedron and its opposite are drawn in green. The homotopy between them is indicated (see the page The 3-dimensional associahedron unfolded and the blue arrows in the "homotopy" variant of Tamari's diagram).

An orthogonal projection of Loday's associahedron

You may click on the images for high resolution versions.

Orthogonal projections to faces

The 9 faces (6 pentagons and 3 rectangles) yield 4 essentially different orthogonal projections.

Projection 1Projection 2Projection 3Projection 4

[click on the images for more detailed high resolution versions]

Some specifics

The realization lies in the hyperplane

x+y+z+t=10

and has the symmetry

T: (x,y,z,t) ↔ (t,z,y,x)

The quadrilateral faces are the parallelograms

Quadrilateral Q0 is a square invariant under T. Quadrilaterals Q1, Q2 are 1x3 rectangles interchanged by T and lying in parallel planes.

The lines orthogonal to some face are

Counting faces: (1+1)+(2+2)+1+2=9.

See also [Source: cube-3LO.tex].

[Projection 1] [Projection 2] [Projection 3] [Projection 4] (also linked from the small stripped versions above) are flat high resolution images for the projections along L1, L2, L3, L4, respectively (L1', L2' are implied via T).

Projection 1 makes vertex 4123 incident to edge 1612-4312 but is otherwise generic. It appears to be the least degenerate among the 4 projections.

Projection 2 identifies vertices 3214, 4321. The projections of the adjacent pairs of parallel edges 3214-3124, 4321-4141 (direction [0,-1,1,0], length ratio 1:2) and 3214-1414, 4321-1621 (direction [-1,1,0,0], length ratio 2:3) overlap accordingly.

Projection 3 collapses Q1, Q2 like this:

Projection 3 on rectangles

Projection 4 collapses Q0 along its diagonal 3124-4213 and lets Q1, Q2 overlap, identifying corners 2134, 4312. It identifies edges 3124-2134 and 4213-4312.

Pentagon shapes

The pentagon orthogonal to L1 and the 2 pentagons orthogonal to L2 have the shapes

Pentagon 1Pentagon 2-1Pentagon 2-2

The 3rd pentagon is the Loday realization in the 2-dimensional case.

Colors

Projection 1 (colored)Projection 2 (colored)Projection 3 (colored)Projection 4 (colored)

Projection 1 (very colored)Projection 2 (very colored)Projection 3 (very colored)Projection 4 (very colored)

Projection 1 (black and red)Projection 2 (black and red)Projection 3 (black and red)Projection 4 (black and red)

[click on the images for high resolution versions]


Go to: Associahedron and associator identities · Publications and Preprints · Markus Rost's Web Page