Homotopy type of intervals of the second higher Bruhat orders

The higher Bruhat order is a poset of cubical tilings of a cyclic zonotope whose covering relations are cubical flips. For a 2-dimensional zonotope, the higher Bruhat order is isomorphic to a poset on commutation classes of reduced words for the longest element of a type A Coxeter system. For this case, we prove that the noncontractible intervals are in natural correspondence with the zonogonal tilings of a zonogon. Our proof uses some tools developed by Felsner and Weil to show that the two standard orderings on the rhombic tilings of a zonogon are identical.