Split-facets for Balanced Minimal Evolution Polytopes and the Permutoassociahedron

TL;DR

This paper explores the face structure of the BME polytope, revealing a sub-lattice related to the permutoassociahedron and identifying many facets that grow exponentially, with implications for phylogenetics.

Contribution

It introduces a new sub-lattice of the BME polytope's face poset isomorphic to a quotient of the permutoassociahedron, extending previous face lattice results.

Findings

Identifies a sub-lattice of the BME polytope's faces isomorphic to a quotient of the permutoassociahedron.

Nearly all maximal elements in this sub-lattice are facets of the BME polytope.

The collection of facets grows exponentially with the size of the phylogenetic trees.

Abstract

Understanding the face structure of the balanced minimal evolution (BME) polytope, especially its top-dimensional facets, is crucially important to phylogenetic applications. We show that BME polytope has a sub-lattice of its poset of faces which is isomorphic to a quotient of the well-studied permutoassociahedron. This sub-lattice corresponds to compatible sets of splits displayed by phylogenetic trees, and extends the lattice of faces of the BME polytope found by Hodge, Haws, and Yoshida. Each of the maximal elements in our new poset of faces corresponds to a single split of the leaves. Nearly all of these turn out to actually be facets of the BME polytope, a collection of facets which grows exponentially.