Noncrossing Partition Lattices from Planar Configurations

Abstract

The lattice of noncrossing partitions is well-known for its wide variety of combinatorial appearances and properties. For example, the lattice is rank-symmetric and enumerated by the Catalan numbers. In this article, we introduce a large family of new noncrossing partition lattices with both of these properties, each parametrized by a configuration of n points in the plane.