Nonconstructible Simplicial Balls and a Way of Testing Constructibility

Constructibility of simplicial complexes is a notion weaker than shellability. It is known that shellable pseudomanifolds are homeomorphic to balls or spheres but simplicial complexes homeomorphic to balls or spheres need not be shellable in general. Constructible pseudomanifolds are also homeomorphic to balls or spheres, but the existence of nonconstructible balls was not known. In this paper we study the constructibility of some nonshellable balls and show that some of them are not constructible, either. Moreover, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the constructibility of three-dimensional simplicial balls, whose vertices are all on the boundary. Received September 29, 1997, and in revised form August 3, 1998 and August 11, 1998.     

On stars and links of shellable polytopal complexes

The vertex stars of shellable polytopal complexes are shown to be shellable. The link of a vertex v of a shellable polytopal complex is also shown to be shellable, provided that all facets of the star of v are simple polytopes, or (more generally) if there exists a shelling F₁,…,F_n of the star of v such that, for every 1<j?n, the intersection of F_j with the previous facets is an initial segment of a line shelling of the boundary complex of F_j.     

Shellable graphs and sequentially Cohen-Macaulay bipartite graphs

Associated to a simple undirected graph G is a simplicial complex ΔG whose faces correspond to the independent sets of G. We call a graph G shellable if ΔG is a shellable simplicial complex in the non-pure sense of Björner-Wachs. We are then interested in determining what families of graphs have the property that G is shellable. We show that all chordal graphs are shellable. Furthermore, we classify all the shellable bipartite graphs; they are precisely the sequentially Cohen-Macaulay bipartite graphs. We also give a recursive procedure to verify if a bipartite graph is shellable. Because shellable implies that the associated Stanley-Reisner ring is sequentially Cohen-Macaulay, our results complement and extend recent work on the problem of determining when the edge ideal of a graph is (sequentially) Cohen-Macaulay. We also give a new proof for a result of Faridi on the sequentially Cohen-Macaulayness of simplicial forests.     

Constructible Ideals

Based on the study of simplicial complexes, one may naturally define the constructible monomial ideals. We connect the square-free constructible ideal with the Stanley–Reisner ideal of the Alexander dual associated to a constructible simplicial complex. We give some properties of constructible ideals, and we compute the Betti numbers. We prove that all monomial ideals with linear quotients are constructible ideals. We also show that all constructible ideals have a linear resolution.     

Complexes of directed trees and independence complexes

First we prove that certain complexes on directed acyclic graphs are shellable. Then we study independence complexes. Two theorems used for breaking and gluing such complexes are proved and applied to generalize the results by Kozlov.An interesting special case is anti-Rips complexes: a subset P of a metric space is the vertex set of the complex, and we include as a simplex each subset of P with no pair of points within distance r. For any finite subset P of R the homotopy type of the anti-Rips complex is determined.     

Croissance des Solutions des D-Modules algébriques holonomes – (Growth of solutions of holonomic algebraic D-modules)

We show that the cohomology of complexes of solutions of exponantial type associated to holonomic algebraic D-modules is constructible. We also compute the Euler–Poincaré index of such complexes.     

Finite filtrations of modules and shellable multicomplexes

We introduce pretty clean modules, extending the notion of clean modules by Dress, and show that pretty clean modules are sequentially Cohen–Macaulay. We also extend a theorem of Dress on shellable simplicial complexes to multicomplexes.     

Shellable quasi-forests and their h-triangles

In this paper we show that a quasi-forest is shellable if and only if its h-triangle satisfies ${h_{i,j}(\Delta)=0 \quad \forall i, \forall j >1 }$ . In addition, it will be shown that a quasi-forest is sequentially Cohen-Macaulay if and only if it is shellable.     

Spheres arising from multicomplexes

In 1992, Thomas Bier introduced a surprisingly simple way to construct a large number of simplicial spheres. He proved that, for any simplicial complex Δ on the vertex set V with Δ≠V², the deleted join of Δ with its Alexander dual Δ^∨ is a combinatorial sphere. In this paper, we extend Bier?s construction to multicomplexes, and study their combinatorial and algebraic properties. We show that all these spheres are shellable and edge decomposable, which yields a new class of many shellable edge decomposable spheres that are not realizable as polytopes. It is also shown that these spheres are related to polarizations and Alexander duality for monomial ideals which appear in commutative algebra theory.     

Initial complex associated to a jet scheme of a determinantal variety

We show in this paper that the principal component of the first-order jet scheme over the classical determinantal variety of m×n matrices of rank at most 1 is arithmetically Cohen-Macaulay, by showing that an associated Stanley-Reisner simplicial complex is shellable.     

Shelling pseudopolyhedra

The notion of shellability originated in the context of polyhedral complexes and combinatorial topology. An abstraction of this concept for graded posets (i.e., graded partially ordered sets) was recently introduced by Björner and Wachs first in the finite case [1] and then with Walker in the infinite case [11]. Many posets arising in combinatorics and in convex geometry were investigated and some proved to be shellable. A key achievement was the proof by Bruggesser and Mani that boundary complexes of convex polytopes are shellable [4].We extend here the result of Bruggesser and Mani to polyhedral complexes arising as boundary complexes of more general convex sets, called pseudopolyhedra, with suitable asymptotic behavior. This includes a previous result on tilings of a Euclidean space ^d which are projections of the boundary of a (d+1)-pseudopolyhedron [7].     

On the Stanley ring of cubical complex

We investigate the properties of the Stanley ring of a cubical complex, a cubical analogue of the Stanley-Reisner ring of a simplicial complex. We compute its Hilbert series in terms of thef-vector, and prove that by taking the initial ideal of the defining relations, with respect to the reverse lexicographic order, we obtain the defining relations of the Stanley-Reisner ring of the triangulation via “pulling the vertices” of the cubical complex. Applying an old idea of Hochster we see that this ring is Cohen-Macaulay when the complex is shellable, and we show that its defining ideal is generated by quadrics when the complex is also a subcomplex of the boundary complex of a convex cubical polytope. We present a cubical analogue of balanced Cohen-Macaulay simplicial complexes: the class of edge-orientable shellable cubical complexes. Using Stanley's results about balanced Cohen-Macaulay simplicial complexes and the degree two homogeneous generating system of the defining ideal, we obtain an infinite set of examples for a conjecture of Eisenbud, Green, and Harris. This conjecture says that theh-vector of a polynomial ring inn variables modulo an ideal which has ann-element homogeneous system of parameters of degree two, is thef-vector of a simplicial complex.     

Graphic matroids,shellability and the Poincare Conjecture

In this paper we introduce a theory of edge shelling of graphs. Whereas the standard notion of shelling a simplicial complex involves a sequential removal of maximal simplexes, edge shelling involves a sequential removal of the edges of a graph. A necessary and sufficient condition for edge shellability is given in the case of 3-colored graphs, and it is conjectured that the result holds in general. Questions about shelling, and the dual notion of closure, are motivated by topological problems. The connection between graph theory and topology is by way of a complex ΔG associated with a graph G. In particular, every closed 2- or 3-manifold can be realized in this way. If ΔG is shellable, then G is edge shellable, but not conversely. Nevertheless, the condition that G is edge shellable is strong enough to imply that a manifold ΔG must be a sphere. This leads to completely graph-theoretic generalizations of the classical Poincaré Conjecture.     

On the shellability of the order complex of the subgroup lattice of a finite group

We show that the order complex of the subgroup lattice of a finite group is nonpure shellable if and only if is solvable. A by-product of the proof that nonsolvable groups do not have shellable subgroup lattices is the determination of the homotopy types of the order complexes of the subgroup lattices of many minimal simple groups.

     

Cubical Subdivisions and Local h-Vectors

Face numbers of triangulations of simplicial complexes were studied by Stanley by use of his concept of a local h-vector. It is shown that a parallel theory exists for cubical subdivisions of cubical complexes, in which the role of the h-vector of a simplicial complex is played by the (short or long) cubical h-vector of a cubical complex, defined by Adin, and the role of the local h-vector of a triangulation of a simplex is played by the (short or long) cubical local h-vector of a cubical subdivision of a cube. The cubical local h-vectors are defined in this paper and are shown to share many of the properties of their simplicial counterparts. Generalizations to subdivisions of locally Eulerian posets are also discussed.     

Shellability of Interval Orders

An finite interval order is a partially ordered set whose elements are in correspondence with a finite set of intervals in the line, with disjoint intervals being ordered by their relative position. We show that any such order is shellable in the sense that its (not necessarily pure) order complex is shellable.     

Cohen-Macaulay, shellable and unmixed clutters with a perfect matching of König type

Let C be a clutter with a perfect matching e₁,…,e_g of König type and let Δ_C be the Stanley-Reisner complex of the edge ideal of C. If all c-minors of C have a free vertex and C is unmixed, we show that Δ_C is pure shellable. We are able to describe, in combinatorial and algebraic terms, when Δ_C is pure. If C has no cycles of length 3 or 4, then it is shown that Δ_C is pure if and only if Δ_C is pure shellable (in this case e_i has a free vertex for all i), and that Δ_C is pure if and only if for any two edges f₁,f₂ of C and for any e_i, one has that f₁∩e_i⊂f₂∩e_i or f₂∩e_i⊂f₁∩e_i. It is also shown that this ordering condition implies that Δ_C is pure shellable, without any assumption on the cycles of C. Then we prove that complete admissible uniform clutters and their Alexander duals are unmixed. In addition, the edge ideals of complete admissible uniform clutters are facet ideals of shellable simplicial complexes, they are Cohen-Macaulay, and they have linear resolutions. Furthermore if C is admissible and complete, then C is unmixed. We characterize certain conditions that occur in a Cohen-Macaulay criterion for bipartite graphs of Herzog and Hibi, and extend some results of Faridi-on the structure of unmixed simplicial trees-to clutters with the König property without 3-cycles or 4-cycles.     

Planar lattices are lexicographically shellable

The special properties of planar posets have been studied, particularly in the 1970's by I. Rival and others. More recently, the connection between posets, their corresponding polynomial rings and corresponding simplicial complexes has been studied by Stanley and others. This paper, using work of Björner, provides a connection between the two bodies of work, by characterizing when planar posets are Cohen-Macaulay. Planar posets are lattices when they contain a greatest and a least element. We show that a finite planar lattice is lexicographically shellable and therefore Cohen-Macaulay iff it is rank-connected.     

Antichain Cutsets of Strongly Connected Posets

Rival and Zaguia showed that the antichain cutsets of a finite Boolean lattice are exactly the level sets. We show that a similar characterization of antichain cutsets holds for any strongly connected poset of locally finite height. As a corollary, we characterize the antichain cutsets in semimodular lattices, supersolvable lattices, Bruhat orders, locally shellable lattices, and many more. We also consider a generalization to strongly connected d-uniform hypergraphs.     

Shellability of exponential structures

We show that the poset of all partitions of an nd-set with block size divisible by d is shellable. Using similar techniques, it also follows that various other examples of exponential structures cited by Stanley are also shellable. The method used involves the notion of recursive atom orderings introduced by Björner and Wachs.Research supported in part by NATO post-doctoral grant administered by the NSF.