Polytopes of Effective Boundary Expressions of Divisors on $\overline{M}_{0,n}$

Abstract

For a divisor on $\overline{M}_{0,n}$, we introduce the polytope of its effective boundary expressions. We establish structural properties of these polytopes under the forgetful maps of $\overline{M}_{0,n}$ forgetting marked points, and give equivalent graph-theoretic descriptions. We compute these polytopes for several families of divisors. For psi-classes and their pullbacks by forgetful maps, we show that the polytopes are unimodular simplices. For the log-canonical class and its modifications by psi-classes, we prove that the nonnegative parts of the corresponding polytopes recover spanning forest polytopes and the subtour elimination (Held--Karp relaxation) polytope of the symmetric traveling salesman problem. As an application, we obtain a Minkowski-like decomposition of the subtour elimination polytope into simplices. Finally, for symmetric level-one $\mathfrak{sl}_p$ conformal block divisors, we show that the defining inequalities are local Tur\'an bounds and the $0/1$-points are balanced Tur\'an graphs. Moreover, for $p=2$ and $p=n/2$, these polytopes recover the perfect matching and fractional perfect matching polytopes.