The Cayley Trick, lifting subdivisions and the Bohne–Dress theorem on zonotopal tilings

Abstract

We prove a natural bijection between the polytopal tilings of a zonotope Z by zonotopes, and the one-element-liftings of the oriented matroid M(Z) associated with Z. This yields a simple proof and a strengthening of the Bohne-Dress Theorem on zonotopal tilings. Furthermore we prove that not every oriented matroid can be represented by a zonotopal tiling.