Related papers: Face enumeration on simplicial complexes

We often rely on censuses of triangulations to guide our intuition in $3$-manifold topology. However, this can lead to misplaced faith in conjectures if the smallest counterexamples are too large to appear in our census. Since the number of…

This is a survey of recent developments in combinatorics. The goal is to give a big picture of its many interactions with other areas of mathematics, such as: group theory, representation theory, commutative algebra, geometry (including…

We develop a combinatorial framework to study certain polyhedral maps which are higher-dimensional analogues of tropical covers between metric graphs. Under a mild combinatorial assumption, we show that a map satisfies the so-called…

The shellability status of previously investigated simplicial complexes with up to 24 facets is settled. In case of shellability the exact number of shellings is determined. Our algorithm merely relies on the facets, and not on additional…

We prove the following results on flag triangulations of 2- and 3-manifolds. In dimension 2, we prove that the vertex-minimal flag triangulations of $\mathbb{R} P^2$ and $\mathbb{S}^1\times \mathbb{S}^1$ have 11 and 12 vertices,…

Normal surface theory is a central tool in algorithmic three-dimensional topology, and the enumeration of vertex normal surfaces is the computational bottleneck in many important algorithms. However, it is not well understood how the number…

For a given pair of numbers $(d,k)$, we establish the minimal number of vertices in pure $d$-dimensional simplicial complexes with non-trivial homology in dimension $k$. Furthermore, we solve the problem under the additional constraint of…

What is the maximum length ${\rm f}_{\rm max}(\ell, \Sigma)$ of a facial cycle of an inclusion-maximal graph with girth at least $\ell$ embedded on a given surface $\Sigma$? If $\Sigma=\mathcal{P}$ is a plane, we show that $3\ell-11\leq…

Let $M$ be an $n$-vertex combinatorial triangulation of a $\ZZ_2$-homology $d$-sphere. In this paper we prove that if $n \leq d + 8$ then $M$ must be a combinatorial sphere. Further, if $n = d + 9$ and $M$ is not a combinatorial sphere then…

In studying properties of simple drawings of the complete graph in the sphere, two natural questions arose for us: can an edge have multiple segments on the boundary of the same face? and is each face the intersection of sides of 3-cycles?…

Given two combinatorial triangulations, how many edge flips are necessary and sufficient to convert one into the other? This question has occupied researchers for over 75 years. We provide a comprehensive survey, including full proofs, of…

We investigate the combinatorial analogues, in the context of normal surfaces, of taut and transversely measured (codimension 1) foliations of 3-manifolds. We establish that the existence of certain combinatorial structures, a priori weaker…

This paper initiates the explicit study of face numbers of matroid polytopes and their computation. We prove that, for the large class of split matroid polytopes, their face numbers depend solely on the number of cyclic flats of each rank…

In this paper we examine the descriptive potential of a combinatorial data structure known as "Generating Set" in constructing the boundary maps of a simplicial complex. By refining the approach of \cite{Dumas} in generating these maps, we…

A common generalization of two theorems on the face numbers of Cohen-Macaulay (CM, for short) simplicial complexes is established: the first is the theorem of Stanley (necessity) and Bjorner-Frankl-Stanley (sufficiency) that characterizes…

It is possible for a combinatorial type of polytope to have both decomposable and indecomposable realizations; here decomposability is meant with respect to Minkowski addition. Such polytopes are called conditionally decomposable. We show…

A fixed set of vertices in the plane may have multiple planar straight-line triangulations in which the degree of each vertex is the same. As such, the degree information does not completely determine the triangulation. We show that even if…

Suppose we have identified three clusters of galaxies as being topological copies of the same object. How does this information constrain the possible models for the shape of our Universe? It is shown here that, if the Universe has flat…

We study the combinatorial complexity of D-dimensional polyhedra defined as the intersection of n halfspaces, with the property that the highest dimension of any bounded face is much smaller than D. We show that, if d is the maximum…

The topological Tverberg conjecture was considered a central unsolved problem of topological combinatorics. The conjecture asserts that for any integers $r,d>1$ and any continuous map $f:\Delta\to\mathbb R^d$ of the $(d+1)(r-1)$-dimensional…