Sortable elements for quivers with cycles

Abstract

Each Coxeter element c of a Coxeter group W defines a subset of W called the c-sortable elements. The choice of a Coxeter element of W is equivalent to the choice of an acyclic orientation of the Coxeter diagram of W. In this paper, we define a more general notion of Ω-sortable elements, where Ω is an arbitrary orientation of the diagram, and show that the key properties of c-sortable elements carry over to the Ω-sortable elements. The proofs of these properties rely on reduction to the acyclic case, but the reductions are nontrivial; in particular, the proofs rely on a subtle combinatorial property of the weak order, as it relates to orientations of the Coxeter diagram. The c-sortable elements are closely tied to the combinatorics of cluster algebras with an acyclic seed; the ultimate motivation behind this paper is to extend this connection beyond the acyclic case.