Flip cycles in plabic graphs

Abstract

Abstract Planar bicolored (plabic) graphs are combinatorial objects introduced by Postnikov to give parameterizations of the positroid cells of the totally nonnegative Grassmannian $$\text {Gr}^{\ge 0}(n,k)$$Gr≥0(n,k). Any two plabic graphs for the same positroid cell can be related by a sequence of certain moves. The flip graph has plabic graphs as vertices and has edges connecting the plabic graphs which are related by a single move. A recent result of Galashin shows that plabic graphs can be seen as cross-sections of zonotopal tilings for the cyclic zonotope Z(n, 3). Taking this perspective, we show that the fundamental group of the flip graph is generated by cycles of length 4, 5, and 10, and use this result to prove a related conjecture of Dylan Thurston about triple crossing diagrams. We also apply our result to make progress on an instance of the generalized Baues problem.