TY - JOUR
T1 - Flow polytopes with Catalan volumes
AU - Corteel, Sylvie
AU - Kim, Jang Soo
AU - Mészáros, Karola
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Académie des sciences
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - The Chan–Robbins–Yuen polytope can be thought of as the flow polytope of the complete graph with netflow vector (1,0,…,0,−1). The normalized volume of the Chan–Robbins–Yuen polytope equals the product of consecutive Catalan numbers, yet there is no combinatorial proof of this fact. We consider a natural generalization of this polytope, namely, the flow polytope of the complete graph with netflow vector (1,1,0,…,0,−2). We show that the volume of this polytope is a certain power of 2 times the product of consecutive Catalan numbers. Our proof uses constant-term identities and further deepens the combinatorial mystery of why these numbers appear. In addition, we introduce two more families of flow polytopes whose volumes are given by product formulas.
AB - The Chan–Robbins–Yuen polytope can be thought of as the flow polytope of the complete graph with netflow vector (1,0,…,0,−1). The normalized volume of the Chan–Robbins–Yuen polytope equals the product of consecutive Catalan numbers, yet there is no combinatorial proof of this fact. We consider a natural generalization of this polytope, namely, the flow polytope of the complete graph with netflow vector (1,1,0,…,0,−2). We show that the volume of this polytope is a certain power of 2 times the product of consecutive Catalan numbers. Our proof uses constant-term identities and further deepens the combinatorial mystery of why these numbers appear. In addition, we introduce two more families of flow polytopes whose volumes are given by product formulas.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85012934508
U2 - 10.1016/j.crma.2017.01.007
DO - 10.1016/j.crma.2017.01.007
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85012934508
SN - 1631-073X
VL - 355
SP - 248
EP - 259
JO - Comptes Rendus Mathematique
JF - Comptes Rendus Mathematique
IS - 3
ER -