Visibility graphs and deformations of associahedra

Abstract: The associahedron is a convex polytope whose face poset is based on nonintersecting diagonals of a convex polygon. In this paper, given an arbitrary simple polygon P, we construct a polytopal complex analogous to the associahedron based on convex diagonalizations of P. We describe topological properties of this complex and provide realizations based on secondary polytopes. Moreover, using the visibility graph of P, a deformation space of polygons is created which encapsulates substructures of the associahedron.