Maximal Fillings of Moon Polyominoes, Simplicial Complexes, and Schubert Polynomials

Abstract

We exhibit a canonical connection between maximal $(0,1)$-fillings of a moon polyomino avoiding north-east chains of a given length and reduced pipe dreams of a certain permutation. Following this approach we show that the simplicial complex of such maximal fillings is a vertex-decomposable, and thus shellable, sphere. In particular, this implies a positivity result for Schubert polynomials. Moreover, for Ferrers shapes we construct a bijection to maximal fillings avoiding south-east chains of the same length which specializes to a bijection between $k$-triangulations of the $n$-gon and $k$-fans of Dyck paths of length $2(n-2k)$. Using this, we translate a conjectured cyclic sieving phenomenon for $k$-triangulations with rotation to the language of $k$-flagged tableaux with promotion.