5 research outputs found
The Tchebyshev transforms of the first and second kind
We give an in-depth study of the Tchebyshev transforms of the first and
second kind of a poset, recently discovered by Hetyei. The Tchebyshev transform
(of the first kind) preserves desirable combinatorial properties, including
Eulerianess (due to Hetyei) and EL-shellability. It is also a linear
transformation on flag vectors. When restricted to Eulerian posets, it
corresponds to the Billera, Ehrenborg and Readdy omega map of oriented
matroids. One consequence is that nonnegativity of the cd-index is maintained.
The Tchebyshev transform of the second kind is a Hopf algebra endomorphism on
the space of quasisymmetric functions QSym. It coincides with Stembridge's peak
enumerator for Eulerian posets, but differs for general posets. The complete
spectrum is determined, generalizing work of Billera, Hsiao and van
Willigenburg.
The type B quasisymmetric function of a poset is introduced. Like Ehrenborg's
classical quasisymmetric function of a poset, this map is a comodule morphism
with respect to the quasisymmetric functions QSym.
Similarities among the omega map, Ehrenborg's r-signed Birkhoff transform,
and the Tchebyshev transforms motivate a general study of chain maps. One such
occurrence, the chain map of the second kind, is a Hopf algebra endomorphism on
the quasisymmetric functions QSym and is an instance of Aguiar, Bergeron and
Sottile's result on the terminal object in the category of combinatorial Hopf
algebras. In contrast, the chain map of the first kind is both an algebra map
and a comodule endomorphism on the type B quasisymmetric functions BQSym.Comment: 33 page
Euler flag enumeration of Whitney stratified spaces
The flag vector contains all the face incidence data of a polytope, and in
the poset setting, the chain enumerative data. It is a classical result due to
Bayer and Klapper that for face lattices of polytopes, and more generally,
Eulerian graded posets, the flag vector can be written as a cd-index, a
non-commutative polynomial which removes all the linear redundancies among the
flag vector entries. This result holds for regular CW complexes.
We relax the regularity condition to show the cd-index exists for Whitney
stratified manifolds by extending the notion of a graded poset to that of a
quasi-graded poset. This is a poset endowed with an order-preserving rank
function and a weighted zeta function. This allows us to generalize the
classical notion of Eulerianness, and obtain a cd-index in the quasi-graded
poset arena. We also extend the semi-suspension operation to that of embedding
a complex in the boundary of a higher dimensional ball and study the simplicial
shelling components.Comment: 41 pages, 3 figures. Final versio
Cutting Polytopes and Flag f-Vectors
We show how the flag f -vector of a polytope changes when cutting off any face, generalizing work of Lee for simple polytopes. The result is in terms of explicit linear operators on cd-polynomials. Also, we obtain the change in the flag f -vector when contracting any face of the polytope