Colorful circuits and colorful topes in oriented matroids

Abstract: We provide a short proof of a conic version of the colorful Carath\'eodory theorem for oriented matroids. Holmsen's extension of the colorful Carath\'eodory theorem to oriented matroids (Advances in Mathematics, 2016) already encompasses several generalizations of the original result, but not its conic version. Our approach relies on a common generalization of Sperner's lemma and Meshulam's lemma - two closely related results from combinatorial topology that have found a number of applications in discrete geometry and combinatorics. This generalization may be of independent interest. Using a similar approach, we also establish the following colorful theorem for topes, whose special geometric case had not been considered before: Given $n$ topes from a uniform oriented matroid with $n$ elements, if they agree on some element, then there is a way to select a distinct element from each tope, together with its sign, so as to form another tope of the oriented matroid. Motivated by this theorem, we further explore other conditions leading to the same conclusion.