Trianguloids and Triangulations of Root Polytopes

Abstract

Triangulations of a product of two simplices and, more generally, of root polytopes are closely related to Gelfand-Kapranov-Zelevinsky's theory of discriminants, to tropical geometry, tropical oriented matroids, and to generalized permutohedra. We introduce a new approach to these objects, identifying a triangulation of a root polytope with a certain bijection between lattice points of two generalized permutohedra. In order to study such bijections, we define trianguloids as edge-colored graphs satisfying simple local axioms. We prove that trianguloids are in bijection with triangulations of root polytopes.