Tower tableaux

We introduce a new combinatorial object called tower diagrams and prove fundamental properties of these objects. We also introduce an algorithm that allows us to slide words to tower diagrams. We show that the algorithm is well-defined only for reduced words which makes the algorithm a test for reducibility. Using the algorithm, a bijection between tower diagrams and finite permutations is obtained and it is shown that this bijection specializes to a bijection between certain labellings of a given tower diagram and reduced expressions of the corresponding permutation. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.