Hardness of Finding Combinatorial Shortest Paths on Graph Associahedra

Abstract. We prove that the computation of a combinatorial shortest path between two vertices of a graph associahedron, introduced by Carr and Devadoss, is NP-hard. This resolves an open problem raised by Cardinal. A graph associahedron is a generalization of the well-known associahedron. The associahedron is obtained as the graph associahedron of a path. Whether the combinatorial (i.e., graph-theoretic) distance between vertices of the associahedron can be computed in polynomial time is a tantalizing and important open problem, which is identical to the computation of the flip distance between two triangulations of a convex polygon, and the rotation distance between two rooted binary trees. Our result shows that an approach for this open problem is not promising if it is applicable to the generalized problem on graph associahedra. As a corollary of our theorem, we prove that the computation of a combinatorial shortest path between two vertices of a polymatroid base polytope cannot be done in polynomial time unless [Formula: see text]. Since a combinatorial shortest path on the matroid base polytope can be computed in polynomial time, our result reveals an unexpected contrast between matroids and polymatroids.