Cohen-Macaulay graphs and face vectors of flag complexes

We introduce a construction on a flag complex that, by means of modifying the associated graph, generates a new flag complex whose $h$-factor is the face vector of the original complex. This construction yields a vertex-decomposable, hence Cohen-Macaulay, complex. From this we get a (non-numerical) characterisation of the face vectors of flag complexes and deduce also that the face vector of a flag complex is the $h$-vector of some vertex-decomposable flag complex. We conjecture that the converse of the latter is true and prove this, by means of an explicit construction, for $h$-vectors of Cohen-Macaulay flag complexes arising from bipartite graphs. We also give several new characterisations of bipartite graphs with Cohen-Macaulay or Buchsbaum independence complexes.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures; major updat

Locally standard torus actions and h'-vectors of simplicial posets

We consider the orbit type filtration on a manifold $X$ with locally standard action of a compact torus and the corresponding homological spectral sequence $(E_X)^r_{*,*}$. If all proper faces of the orbit space $Q=X/T$ are acyclic, and the free part of the action is trivial, this spectral sequence can be described in full. The ranks of diagonal terms are equal to the $h'$-numbers of the Buchsbaum simplicial poset $S_Q$ dual to $Q$. Betti numbers of $X$ depend only on the orbit space $Q$ but not on the characteristic function. If $X$ is a slightly different object, namely the model space $X=(P\times T^n)/\sim$ where $P$ is a cone over Buchsbaum simplicial poset $S$, we prove that $\dim (E_X)^{\infty}_{p,p} = h''_p(S)$. This gives a topological evidence for the fact that $h''$-numbers of Buchsbaum simplicial posets are nonnegative.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures + 1 inline figur

Stanley-Reisner rings of Buchsbaum complexes with a free action by an abelian group

We consider simplicial complexes admitting a free action by an abelian group. Specifically, we establish a refinement of the classic result of Hochster describing the local cohomology modules of the associated Stanley--Reisner ring, demonstrating that the topological structure of the free action extends to the algebraic setting. If the complex in question is also Buchsbaum, this new description allows for a specialization of Schenzel's calculation of the Hilbert series of some of the ring's Artinian reductions. In further application, we generalize to the Buchsbaum case the results of Stanley and Adin that provide a lower bound on the $h$-vector of a Cohen-Macaulay complex admitting a free action by a cyclic group of prime order