22 research outputs found
Minimal triangulations of sphere bundles over the circle
For integers and or 1, let
denote the sphere product if and the
twisted bundle over if . The main results of
this paper are: (a) if (mod 2) then has a unique minimal triangulation using vertices, and
(b) if (mod 2) then has
minimal triangulations (not unique) using vertices. The second result
confirms a recent conjecture of Lutz. The first result provides the first known
infinite family of closed manifolds (other than spheres) for which the minimal
triangulation is unique. Actually, we show that while
has at most one -vertex triangulation (one if
(mod 2), zero otherwise), in sharp contrast, the number of non-isomorphic -vertex triangulations of these -manifolds grows exponentially with
for either choice of . The result in (a), as well as the minimality
part in (b), is a consequence of the following result: (c) for ,
there is a unique -vertex simplicial complex which triangulates a
non-simply connected closed manifold of dimension . This amazing simplicial
complex was first constructed by K\"{u}hnel in 1986. Generalizing a 1987 result
of Brehm and K\"{u}hnel, we prove that (d) any triangulation of a non-simply
connected closed -manifold requires at least vertices. The result
(c) completely describes the case of equality in (d). The proofs rest on the
Lower Bound Theorem for normal pseudomanifolds and on a combinatorial version
of Alexander duality.Comment: 15 pages, Revised, To appear in `Journal of Combinatorial Theory,
Ser. A
Enumerative properties of triangulations of spherical bundles over S^1
We give a complete characterization of all possible pairs (v,e), where v is
the number of vertices and e is the number of edges, of any simplicial
triangulation of an S^k-bundle over S^1. The main point is that Kuhnel's
triangulations of S^{2k+1} x S^1 and the nonorientable S^{2k}-bundle over S^1
are unique among all triangulations of (n-1)-dimensional homology manifolds
with first Betti number nonzero, vanishing second Betti number, and 2n+1
vertices.Comment: To appear in European J. of Combinatorics. Many typos fixe
Stacked polytopes and tight triangulations of manifolds
Tightness of a triangulated manifold is a topological condition, roughly
meaning that any simplexwise linear embedding of the triangulation into
euclidean space is "as convex as possible". It can thus be understood as a
generalization of the concept of convexity. In even dimensions,
super-neighborliness is known to be a purely combinatorial condition which
implies the tightness of a triangulation.
Here we present other sufficient and purely combinatorial conditions which
can be applied to the odd-dimensional case as well. One of the conditions is
that all vertex links are stacked spheres, which implies that the triangulation
is in Walkup's class . We show that in any dimension
\emph{tight-neighborly} triangulations as defined by Lutz, Sulanke and Swartz
are tight.
Furthermore, triangulations with -stacked vertex links and the centrally
symmetric case are discussed.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figure
Hamiltonian submanifolds of regular polytopes
We investigate polyhedral -manifolds as subcomplexes of the boundary
complex of a regular polytope. We call such a subcomplex {\it -Hamiltonian}
if it contains the full -skeleton of the polytope. Since the case of the
cube is well known and since the case of a simplex was also previously studied
(these are so-called {\it super-neighborly triangulations}) we focus on the
case of the cross polytope and the sporadic regular 4-polytopes. By our results
the existence of 1-Hamiltonian surfaces is now decided for all regular
polytopes.
Furthermore we investigate 2-Hamiltonian 4-manifolds in the -dimensional
cross polytope. These are the "regular cases" satisfying equality in Sparla's
inequality. In particular, we present a new example with 16 vertices which is
highly symmetric with an automorphism group of order 128. Topologically it is
homeomorphic to a connected sum of 7 copies of . By this
example all regular cases of vertices with or, equivalently, all
cases of regular -polytopes with are now decided.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure
The flag upper bound theorem for 3- and 5-manifolds
International audienceWe prove that among all flag 3-manifolds on n vertices, the join of two circles with [n 2] and [n 2] vertices respectively is the unique maximizer of the face numbers. This solves the first case of a conjecture due to Lutz and Nevo. Further, we establish a sharp upper bound on the number of edges of flag 5-manifolds and characterize the cases of equality. We also show that the inequality part of the flag upper bound conjecture continues to hold for all flag 3-dimensional Eulerian complexes and characterize the cases of equality in this class