The canonical join complex

In this paper, we study the combinatorics of a certain minimal factorization of the elements in a finite lattice $L$ called the canonical join representation. The join $\bigvee A =w$ is the canonical join representation of $w$ if $A$ is the unique lowest subset of $L$ satisfying $\bigvee A=w$ (where "lowest" is made precise by comparing order ideals under containment). When each element in $L$ has a canonical join representation, we define the canonical join complex to be the abstract simplicial complex of subsets $A$ such that $\bigvee A$ is a canonical join representation. We characterize the class of finite lattices whose canonical join complex is flag, and show how the canonical join complex is related to the topology of $L$.