English

Convex decomposition spaces and Crapo complementation formula

Category Theory 2024-09-06 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

We establish a Crapo complementation formula for the M\"obius function μX\mu^X in a general decomposition space XX in terms of a convex subspace KK and its complement: μXμXK+μXζKμX\mu^X \simeq \mu^{X\setminus K} + \mu^X*\zeta^K*\mu^X. We work at the objective level, meaning that the formula is an explicit homotopy equivalence of \infty-groupoids. Almost all arguments are formulated in terms of (homotopy) pullbacks. Under suitable finiteness conditions on XX, one can take homotopy cardinality to obtain a formula in the incidence algebra at the level of Q\mathbb{Q}-algebras. When XX is the nerve of a locally finite poset, this recovers the Bj\"orner--Walker formula, which in turn specialises to the original Crapo complementation formula when the poset is a finite lattice. A substantial part of the work is to introduce and develop the notion of convexity for decomposition spaces, which in turn requires some general preparation in decomposition-space theory, notably some results on reduced covers and ikeo and semi-ikeo maps. These results may be of wider interest. Once this is set up, the objective proof of the Crapo formula is quite similar to that of Bj\"orner--Walker.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.03742,
  title  = {Convex decomposition spaces and Crapo complementation formula},
  author = {Imma Gálvez-Carrillo and Joachim Kock and Andrew Tonks},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.03742},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

24pp

R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:35:40.039Z