Shellability of posets of labeled partitions and arrangements defined by root systems

Abstract

We prove that the posets of connected components of intersections of toric and elliptic arrangements defined by root systems are EL-shellable and we compute their homotopy type. Our method rests on Bibby's description of such posets by means of "labeled partitions": after giving an EL-labeling and counting homology chains for general posets of labeled partitions, we obtain the stated results by considering the appropriate subposets.