We prove that if a simplicial complex is shellable, then the intersection lattice for the corresponding diagonal arrangement is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres. Furthermore, we describe precisely the spheres in the wedge, based on the data of shelling. Also, we give some examples of diagonal arrangements where the complement is K(π,1), coming from rank 3 matroids.
In extremal graph theory, the problem of finding the elements of a given class of graphs which contain the most cliques traces its routes back to Turán's famous theorem. We consider the implications of the connectivity property of simplicial complexes known as shellability on clique complexes associated with graphs. In this paper, we find the graphs which maximize cliques among all graphs on $n$ vertices with $Δ(G)\leq r$ that have shellable clique complexes.
Imposing a strong condition on the linear order of shellable complexes, we introduce strong shellability. Basic properties, including the existence of dimension-decreasing strong shelling orders, are developed with respect to nonpure strongly shellable complexes. Meanwhile, pure strongly shellable complexes can be characterized by the corresponding codimension one graphs. In addition, we show that the facet ideals of pure strongly shellable complexes have linear quotients.
Suppose a group $G$ acts properly on a simplicial complex $Γ$. Let $l$ be the number of $G$-invariant vertices and $p_1, p_2, ... p_m$ be the sizes of the $G$-orbits having size greater than 1. Then $Γ$ must be a subcomplex of $Λ= Δ^{l-1}* \partial Δ^{p_1-1}*... * \partial Δ^{p_m-1}$. A result of Novik gives necessary conditions on the face numbers of Cohen-Macaulay subcomplexes of $Λ$. We show that these conditions are also sufficient, and thus provide a complete characterization of the face numbers of these complexes.
We study the augmented Bergman complex of a closure operator on a finite set, which interpolates between the order complex of proper flats and the independence complex of the operator. In 2020, Braden, Huh, Matherne, Proudfoot, and Wang showed that augmented Bergman complexes of matroids are always gallery-connected, and recently Bullock, Kelley, Reiner, Ren, Shemy, Shen, Sun, Tao, and Zhang strengthened "gallery-connected" to "shellable" by providing two classes of shelling orders: "flag-to-basis" shellings and "basis-to-flag" shellings. We show that augmented Bergman complexes of matroids ar…
In this paper we show that a $k$-shellable simplicial complex is the expansion of a shellable complex. We prove that the face ring of a pure $k$-shellable simplicial complex satisfies the Stanley conjecture. In this way, by applying expansion functor to the face ring of a given pure shellable complex, we construct a large class of rings satisfying the Stanley conjecture. Also, by presenting some characterizations of $k$-shellable graphs, we extend some results due to Castrillón-Cruz, Cruz-Estrada and Van Tuyl-Villareal.
In geometric, algebraic, and topological combinatorics, the unimodality of combinatorial generating polynomials is frequently studied. Unimodality follows when the polynomial is (real) stable, a property often deduced via the theory of interlacing polynomials. Many of the open questions on stability and unimodality of polynomials pertain to the enumeration of faces of cell complexes. In this paper, we relate the theory of interlacing polynomials to the shellability of cell complexes. We first derive a sufficient condition for stability of the $h$-polynomial of a subdivision of a shellable comp…
A recent conjecture that appeared in three papers by Bigdeli--Faridi, Dochtermann, and Nikseresht, is that every simplicial complex whose clique complex has shellable Alexander dual, is ridge-chordal. This strengthens the long-standing Simon's conjecture that the $k$-skeleton of the simplex is extendably shellable, for any $k$. We show that the stronger conjecture has a negative answer, by exhibiting an infinite family of counterexamples.
We investigate the shellability of the polyhedral join $\mathcal{Z}^*_M (K, L)$ of simplicial complexes $K, M$ and a subcomplex $L \subset K$. We give sufficient conditions and necessary conditions on $(K, L)$ for $\mathcal{Z}^*_M (K, L)$ being shellable. In particular, we show that for some pairs $(K, L)$, $\mathcal{Z}^*_M (K, L)$ becomes shellable regardless of whether $M$ is shellable or not. Polyhedral joins can be applied to graph theory as the independence complex of a certain generalized version of lexicographic products of graphs which we define in this paper. The graph obtained from t…
We show that an 'almost strong Lefschetz' property holds for the barycentric subdivision of a shellable complex. From this we conclude that for the barycentric subdivision of a Cohen-Macaulay complex, the $h$-vector is unimodal, peaks in its middle degree (one of them if the dimension of the complex is even), and that its $g$-vector is an $M$-sequence. In particular, the (combinatorial) $g$-conjecture is verified for barycentric subdivisions of homology spheres. In addition, using the above algebraic result, we derive new inequalities on a refinement of the Eulerian statistics on permutations,…
We study the independence complexes of families of well-covered circulant graphs discovered by Boros-Gurvich-Milanič, Brown-Hoshino, and Moussi. Because these graphs are well-covered, their independence complexes are pure simplicial complexes. We determine when these pure complexes have extra combinatorial (e.g. vertex decomposable, shellable) or topological (e.g. Cohen-Macaulay, Buchsbaum) structure. We also provide a table of all well-covered circulant graphs on 16 or less vertices, and for each such graph, determine if it is vertex decomposable, shellable, Cohen-Macaulay, and/or Buchsbaum. …
We consider a $q$-analogue of abstract simplicial complexes, called $q$-complexes, and discuss the notion of shellability for such complexes. It is shown that $q$-complexes formed by independent subspaces of a $q$-matroid are shellable. Further, we explicitly determine the homology of $q$-complexes corresponding to uniform $q$-matroids. We also outline some partial results concerning the determination of homology of arbitrary shellable $q$-complexes..
The construction of the Bier sphere Bier(K) for a simplicial complex K is due to Bier. Björner, Paffenholz, Sjöstrand and Ziegler generalize this construction to obtain a Bier poset Bier(P,I) from any bounded poset P and any proper ideal I of P. They show shellability of Bier(P,I) for the case where P is the boolean lattice, and obtain thereby 'many shellable spheres' in the sense of Kalai. We put the Bier construction into the general framework of the theory of nested set complexes of Feichtner and Kozlov. We obtain 'more shellable spheres' by proving the general statement that combinatorial …
We show that the $γ$-vector of the order complex of any polytope is the f-vector of a balanced simplicial complex. This is done by proving this statement for a subclass of Stanley's S-shellable spheres which includes all polytopes. The proof shows that certain parts of the cd-index, when specializing $c=1$ and considering the resulted polynomial in $d$, are the f-polynomials of simplicial complexes that can be colored with "few" colors. We conjecture that the cd-index of a regular CW-sphere is itself the flag f-vector of a colored simplicial complex in a certain sense.
The augmented Bergman complex of a matroid is a simplicial complex introduced recently in work of Braden, Huh, Matherne, Proudfoot and Wang. It may be viewed as a hybrid of two well-studied pure shellable simplicial complexes associated to matroids: the independent set complex and Bergman complex. It is shown here that the augmented Bergman complex is also shellable, via two different families of shelling orders. Furthermore, comparing the description of its homotopy type induced from the two shellings re-interprets a known convolution formula counting bases of the matroid. The representation …
An h-tiling on a finite simplicial complex is a partition of its geometric realization by maximal simplices deprived of several codimension one faces together with possibly their remaining face of highest codimension. In this last case, the tiles are said to be critical. An h-tiling thus induces a partitioning of its face poset by closed or semi-open intervals. We prove the existence of h-tilings on every finite simplicial complex after finitely many stellar subdivisions at maximal simplices. These tilings are moreover shellable. We also prove that the number of tiles of each type used by a ti…
We introduce a notion of Morse shellings (and tilings) on finite simplicial complexes which extends the classical one and its relation to discrete Morse theory.Skeletons and barycentric subdivisions of Morse shellable (or tileable) simplicial complexes are Morse shellable (or tileable). Moreover, every triangulated closed surface is Morse shellable while every closed three-manifold carries Morse shellable triangulations. Finally, any shelling encodes a class of discrete Morse functions whose critical points are in one-to-one correspondence, preserving the index, with the critical tiles of the …
We prove that the posets of connected components of intersections of toric and elliptic arrangements defined by root systems are EL-shellable and we compute their homotopy type. Our method rests on Bibby's description of such posets by means of "labeled partitions": after giving an EL-labeling and counting homology chains for general posets of labeled partitions, we obtain the stated results by considering the appropriate subposets.
The $h$-polynomial of the barycentric subdivision of any $n$-dimensional cubical complex with nonnegative cubical $h$-vector is shown to have only real roots and to be interlaced by the Eulerian polynomial of type $B_n$. This result applies to barycentric subdivisions of shellable cubical complexes and, in particular, to barycentric subdivisions of cubical convex polytopes and answers affirmatively a question of Brenti, Mohammadi and Welker.
In this paper, we give a new algebraic criterion for the {\em shellability} of (non-pure) simplicial complex $Δ$ over $[n]$, shellable in the sense of Björner and Wachs \cite{BW}. We show that the spanning simplicial complex of doubly uni-cyclic graph is non-pure shellable. Moreover, we introduce the concept of Gallai-simplicial complex $Δ_Γ(G)$ of a finite simple graph $G$. We applied the obtained criterion to discuss the shellability of Gallai simplicial complexes associated to various classes of graphs..
We prove that for all $d \geq 1$ a shellable $d$-dimensional simplicial complex with at most $d+3$ vertices is extendably shellable. The proof involves considering the structure of `exposed' edges in chordal graphs as well as a connection to linear quotients of quadratic monomial ideals.
The bounded degree complex $BD(G,λ)$ is a generalization of the matching complexes of a graph. In this paper, we show that the bounded degree complex of a forest is shellable, by using independence complexes of hypergraphs. We obtain a wedge decomposition result of bounded degree complexes when a graph $G$ has a leaf
We recently introduced a notion of tilings of geometric realizations of finite relative simplicial complexes and related those tilings to the discrete Morse theory of R. Forman, especially when they have the property of being shellable, a property shared by the classical shellable complexes. We now observe that every such tiling supports a quiver which is acyclic precisely when the tiling is shellable and then, that every shelling induces two spectral sequences which converge to the relative (co)homology of the complex. Their first pages are free modules over the critical tiles of the tiling.
Steingrimsson's coloring complex and Jonsson's unipolar complex are interpreted in terms of hyperplane arrangements. This viewpoint leads to short proofs that all coloring complexes and a large class of unipolar complexes have convex ear decompositions. These convex ear decompositions impose strong new restrictions on the chromatic polynomials of all finite graphs. Similar results are obtained for characteristic polynomials of submatroids of type B_n arrangements.
In this paper, we study $k$-parabolic arrangements, a generalization of the $k$-equal arrangement for any finite real reflection group. When $k=2$, these arrangements correspond to the well-studied Coxeter arrangements. We construct a cell complex $Perm_k(W)$ that is homotopy equivalent to the complement. We then apply discrete Morse theory to obtain a minimal cell complex for the complement. As a result, we give combinatorial interpretations for the Betti numbers, and show that the homology groups are torsion free. We also study a generalization of the Independence Complex of a graph, and sho…
We recently defined a property of Morse shellability (and tileability) of finite simplicial complexes which extends the classical one and its relations with discrete Morse theory. We now prove that the product of two Morse tileable or shellable simplicial complexes carries Morse tileable or shellable triangulations under some tameness condition, and that any tiling or shelling becomes tame after one barycentric subdivision. We deduce that any finite product of closed manifolds of dimensions less than four carries Morse shellable triangulations whose critical and h-vectors are palindromic. We a…
A forest is the clique complex of a strongly chordal graph and a quasi-forest is the clique complex of a chordal graph. Kruskal--Katona type theorems for forests, quasi-forests, pure forests and pure quasi-forests will be presented. In addition, it will be shown that a quasi-forest is shellable if and only if its $h$-vector $(h_0, h_1, h_2, ...)$ satisfies $h_i = 0$ for $i > 1$.
We prove a theorem allowing us to find convex-ear decompositions for rank-selected subposets of posets that are unions of Boolean sublattices in a coherent fashion. We then apply this theorem to geometric lattices and face posets of shellable complexes, obtaining new inequalities for their h-vectors. Finally, we use the latter decomposition to prove new inequalities for the flag h-vectors of face posets of Cohen-Macaulay complexes.
Tropical varieties play an important role in algebraic geometry. The Bergman complex B(M) and the positive Bergman complex B+(M) of an oriented matroid M generalize to matroids the notions of the tropical variety and positive tropical variety associated to a linear ideal. Our main result is that if A is a Coxeter arrangement of type Phi with corresponding oriented matroid M_Phi, then B+(M_Phi) is dual to the graph associahedron of type Phi, and B(M_Phi) equals the nested set complex of A. In addition, we prove that for any orientable matroid M, one can find |mu(M)| different reorientations of …
We exhibit a canonical connection between maximal (0,1)-fillings of a moon polyomino avoiding north-east chains of a given length and reduced pipe dreams of a certain permutation. Following this approach we show that the simplicial complex of such maximal fillings is a vertex-decomposable, and thus shellable, sphere. In particular, this implies a positivity result for Schubert polynomials. For Ferrers shapes, we moreover construct a bijection to maximal fillings avoiding south-east chains of the same length which specializes to a bijection between k-triangulations of the n-gon and k-fans of Dy…
Let $W$ be a Weyl group corresponding to the root system $A_{n-1}$ or $B_n$. We define a simplicial complex $ Δ^m_W $ in terms of polygon dissections for such a group and any positive integer $m$. For $ m=1 $, $ Δ^m_W$ is isomorphic to the cluster complex corresponding to $ W $, defined in \cite{FZ}. We enumerate the faces of $ Δ^m_W $ and show that the entries of its $h$-vector are given by the generalized Narayana numbers $ N^m_W(i) $, defined in \cite{Atha3}. We also prove that for any $ m \geq 1$ the complex $ Δ^m_W $ is shellable and hence Cohen-Macaulay.
In toric topology, to a simplicial complex $K$ with $m$ vertices, one associates two spaces, the moment-angle complex $\mathcal{Z}_K$ and the Davis-Januszkiewicz space $DJ_K$. These spaces are connected by a homotopy fibration $\mathcal{Z}_K\to DJ_K\to(\mathbb{C}P^\infty)^m$. In this paper, we show that the map $\mathcal{Z}_K\to DJ_K$ is identified with a wedge of iterated (higher) Whitehead products for a certain class of simplicial complexes $K$ including dual shellable complexes. We will prove the result in a more general setting of polyhedral products.
We prove that certain polyhedral products, including the moment-angle complexes, for the Alexander duals of shellable and sequentially Cohen-Macaulay complexes decompose into wedges of explicitly given suspension spaces, which implies the properties of the Stanley-Reisner rings, known as Golod, of theses complexes.
Ehrenborg, Govindaiah, Park, and Readdy recently introduced the van der Waerden complex, a pure simplicial complex whose facets correspond to arithmetic progressions. Using techniques from combinatorial commutative algebra, we classify when these pure simplicial complexes are vertex decomposable or not Cohen-Macaulay. As a corollary, we classify the van der Waerden complexes that are shellable.
We study the exactness of certain combinatorially defined complexes which generalize the Orlik-Solomon algebra of a geometric lattice. The main results pertain to complex reflection arrangements and their restrictions. In particular, we consider the corresponding relation complexes and give a simple proof of the $n$-formality of these hyperplane arrangements. As an application, we are able to bound the Castelnouvo-Mumford regularity of certain modules over polynomial rings associated to Coxeter arrangements (real reflection arrangements) and their restrictions. The modules in question are defi…
We prove that the second derived subdivision of any rectilinear triangulation of any convex polytope is shellable. Also, we prove that the first derived subdivision of every rectilinear triangulation of any convex 3-dimensional polytope is shellable. This complements Mary Ellen Rudin's classical example of a non-shellable rectilinear triangulation of the tetrahedron. Our main tool is a new relative notion of shellability that characterizes the behavior of shellable complexes under gluing. As a corollary, we obtain a new characterization of the PL property in terms of shellability: A triangulat…
We introduce and investigate $d$-convex union representable complexes: the complexes that arise as the nerve of a finite collection of convex open sets in $\mathbb R^d$ whose union is also convex. Chen, Frick, and Shiu recently proved that such complexes are collapsible and asked if all collapsible complexes are convex union representable. We disprove this by showing that there exist shellable and collapsible complexes that are not convex union representable; there also exist non-evasive complexes that are not convex union representable. In the process we establish several necessary conditions…
We give a new proof of an old identity of Dixon (1865-1936) that uses tools from topological combinatorics. Dixon's identity is re-established by constructing an infinite family of non-pure simplicial complexes $Δ(n)$, indexed by the positive integers, such that the alternating sum of the numbers of faces of $Δ(n)$ of each dimension is the left-hand side of the identity. We show that $Δ(n)$ is shellable for all $n$. Then, using the fact that a shellable simplicial complex is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres, we compute the Betti numbers of $Δ(n)$ by counting (via a generating function…
We describe dualities and complexes of logarithmic forms and differentials for central affine and corresponding projective arrangements. We generalize the Borel-Serre formula from vector bundles to sheaves on projective d-space with locally free resolutions of length one. Combining these results we present a generalization of a formula due to Mustata and Schenck, relating the Poincare polynomial of an arrangement in projective 3-space (or a locally tame arrangement in projective d-space with zero-dimensional non-free locus) to the total Chern polynomial of its sheaf of logarithmic 1-forms.
Given a simplicial hyperplane arrangement H and a subspace arrangement A embedded in H, we define a simplicial complex Delta_{A,H} as the subdivision of the link of A induced by H. In particular, this generalizes Steingrimsson's coloring complex of a graph. We do the following: (1) When A is a hyperplane arrangement, Delta_{A,H} is shown to be shellable. As a special case, we answer affirmatively a question of Steingrimsson on coloring complexes. (2) For H being a Coxeter arrangement of type A or B we obtain a close connection between the Hilbert series of the Stanley-Reisner ring of Delta_{A,…
The starting point is the known fact that some much-studied random walks on permutations, such as the Tsetlin library, arise from walks on real hyperplane arrangements. This paper explores similar walks on complex hyperplane arrangements. This is achieved by involving certain cell complexes naturally associated with the arrangement. In a particular case this leads to walks on libraries with several shelves. We also show that interval greedoids give rise to random walks belonging to the same general family. Members of this family of Markov chains, based on certain semigroups, have the property …
The theory of complexes of directed trees was initiated by Kozlov to answer a question by Stanley, and later on, results from the theory were used by Babson and Kozlov in their proof of the Lovasz conjecture. We develop the theory and prove that complexes on directed acyclic graphs are shellable. A related concept is that of independence complexes: construct a simplicial complex on the vertex set of a graph, by including each independent set of vertices as a simplex. Two theorems used for breaking and gluing such complexes are proved and applied to generalize results by Kozlov. A fruitful rest…
We study Stanley-Reisner ideals of broken circuits complexes and characterize those ones admitting a linear resolution or being complete intersections. These results will then be used to characterize arrangements whose Orlik-Terao ideal has the same properties. As an application, we improve a result of Wilf on upper bounds for the coefficients of the chromatic polynomial of a maximal planar graph. We also show that for an ordered matroid with disjoint minimal broken circuits, the supersolvability of the matroid is equivalent to the Koszulness of its Orlik-Solomon algebra.
Shellings of simplicial complexes have long been a useful tool in topological and algebraic combinatorics. Shellings of a complex expose a large amount of information in a helpful way, but are not easy to construct, often requiring deep information about the structure of the complex. It is natural to ask whether shellings may be efficiently found computationally. In a recent paper, Goaoc, Paták, Patáková, Tancer and Wagner gave a negative answer to this question (assuming P \neq NP), showing that the problem of deciding whether a simplicial complex is shellable is NP-complete. In this paper, w…
For a real oriented hyperplane arrangement, we show that the corresponding Salvetti complex is homotopy equivalent to the complement of the complexified arrangement. This result was originally proved by M. Salvetti. Our proof follows the framework of a proof given by L. Paris and relies heavily on the notation of oriented matroids. We also show that homotopy equivalence is preserved when we quotient by the action of the corresponding reflection group. In particular, the Salvetti complex of the braid arrangement in $\ell$ dimensions modulo the action of the symmetric group is a cell complex whi…
Nested set complexes appear as the combinatorial core of De Concini-Procesi arrangement models. We show that nested set complexes are homotopy equivalent to the order complexes of the underlying meet-semilattices without their minimal elements. For atomic semilattices, we consider the realization of nested set complexes by simplicial fans as proposed in math.AG/0305142 by the first author and S. Yuzvinsky. We show that in this case the nested set complexes in fact are homeomorphic to the mentioned order complexes.