The Hypersimplex VS the Amplituhedron: Signs, Clusters, Triangulations, and Eulerian Numbers
We discover a striking duality, T-duality, between two seemingly unrelated objects. The hypersimplex Δk+1,n is a polytope obtained as the image of the positive Grassmannian Gr≥0k+1,n under the well-known moment map. Meanwhile, the amplituhedron An,k,2 is the projection from the positive Grassmannian Gr≥0k,n into the Grassmannian Grk,k+2 under the amplituhedron map. Introduced in the context of the physics of scattering amplitudes, it is not a polytope and has full dimension inside Grk,k+2. We draw novel connections between the two objects and prove many new properties of them. We exploit T-duality to relate their triangulations and generalised triangles -- maximal cells in a triangulation. We subdivide An,k,2 into chambers as Δk+1,n can be subdivided into simplices -- both enumerated by Eulerian numbers. Moreover, we prove a main result about the hypersimplex and the positive tropical Grassmannian Trop+Grk+1,n, several conjectures on the amplituhedron, and find novel cluster-algebraic structures.
This talk is based on the recent joint work with L. K. Williams and M. Sherman-Bennett (Preprint, arXiv: 2104.08254).