Face enumeration on simplicial complexes

Let $M$ be a closed triangulable manifold, and let $\Delta$ be a triangulation of $M$. What is the smallest number of vertices that $\Delta$ can have? How big or small can the number of edges of $\Delta$ be as a function of the number of vertices? More generally, what are the possible face numbers ($f$-numbers, for short) that $\Delta$ can have? In other words, what restrictions does the topology of $M$ place on the possible $f$-numbers of triangulations of $M$? To make things even more interesting, we can add some combinatorial conditions on the triangulations we are considering (e.g., flagness, balancedness, etc.) and ask what additional restrictions these combinatorial conditions impose. While only a few theorems in this area of combinatorics were known a couple of decades ago, in the last ten years or so, the field simply exploded with new results and ideas. Thus we feel that a survey paper is long overdue. As new theorems are being proved while we are typing this chapter, and as we have only a limited number of pages, we apologize in advance to our friends and colleagues, some of whose results will not get mentioned here.Comment: Chapter for upcoming IMA volume Recent Trends in Combinatoric

On stacked triangulated manifolds

We prove two results on stacked triangulated manifolds in this paper: (a) every stacked triangulation of a connected manifold with or without boundary is obtained from a simplex or the boundary of a simplex by certain combinatorial operations; (b) in dimension $d \geq 4$, if $\Delta$ is a tight connected closed homology $d$-manifold whose $i$th homology vanishes for $1 < i < d-1$, then $\Delta$ is a stacked triangulation of a manifold.These results give affirmative answers to questions posed by Novik and Swartz and by Effenberger.Comment: 11 pages, minor changes in the organization of the paper, add information about recent result

Tight triangulations of closed 3-manifolds

It is well known that a triangulation of a closed 2-manifold is tight with respect to a field of characteristic two if and only if it is neighbourly; and it is tight with respect to a field of odd characteristic if and only if it is neighbourly and orientable. No such characterization of tightness was previously known for higher dimensional manifolds. In this paper, we prove that a triangulation of a closed 3-manifold is tight with respect to a field of odd characteristic if and only if it is neighbourly, orientable and stacked. In consequence, the K\"{u}hnel-Lutz conjecture is valid in dimension three for fields of odd characteristic. Next let $\mathbb{F}$ be a field of characteristic two. It is known that, in this case, any neighbourly and stacked triangulation of a closed 3-manifold is $\mathbb{F}$-tight. For triangulated closed 3-manifolds with at most 71 vertices or with first Betti number at most 188, we show that the converse is true. But the possibility of an $\mathbb{F}$-tight non-stacked triangulation on a larger number of vertices remains open. We prove the following upper bound theorem on such triangulations. If an $\mathbb{F}$-tight triangulation of a closed 3-manifold has $n$ vertices and first Betti number $\beta_1$, then $(n-4)(617n- 3861) \leq 15444\beta_1$. Equality holds here if and only if all the vertex links of the triangulation are connected sums of boundary complexes of icosahedra.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figur

Discrete isometry groups of symmetric spaces

This survey is based on a series of lectures that we gave at MSRI in Spring 2015 and on a series of papers, mostly written jointly with Joan Porti. Our goal here is to: 1. Describe a class of discrete subgroups $\Gamma<G$ of higher rank semisimple Lie groups, which exhibit some "rank 1 behavior". 2. Give different characterizations of the subclass of Anosov subgroups, which generalize convex-cocompact subgroups of rank 1 Lie groups, in terms of various equivalent dynamical and geometric properties (such as asymptotically embedded, RCA, Morse, URU). 3. Discuss the topological dynamics of discrete subgroups $\Gamma$ on flag manifolds associated to $G$ and Finsler compactifications of associated symmetric spaces $X=G/K$. Find domains of proper discontinuity and use them to construct natural bordifications and compactifications of the locally symmetric spaces $X/\Gamma$.Comment: 77 page

Geometric and Algebraic Combinatorics

The 2015 Oberwolfach meeting “Geometric and Algebraic Combinatorics” was organized by Gil Kalai (Jerusalem), Isabella Novik (Seattle), Francisco Santos (Santander), and Volkmar Welker (Marburg). It covered a wide variety of aspects of Discrete Geometry, Algebraic Combinatorics with geometric flavor, and Topological Combinatorics. Some of the highlights of the conference included (1) counterexamples to the topological Tverberg conjecture, and (2) the latest results around the Heron-Rota-Welsh conjecture

Thirty-five years and counting

It has been 35 years since Stanley proved that f-vectors of boundaries of simplicial polytopes satisfy McMullen's conjectured g-conditions. Since then one of the outstanding questions in the realm of face enumeration is whether or not Stanley's proof could be extended to larger classes of spheres. Here we hope to give an overview of various attempts to accomplish this and why we feel this is so important. In particular, we will see a strong connection to f-vectors of manifolds and pseudomanifolds. Along the way we have included several previously unpublished results involving how the g-conjecture relates to bistellar moves and small g_2, the topology and combinatorics of stacked manifolds introduced independently by Bagchi and Datta, and Murai and Nevo, and counterexamples to over optimistic generalizations of the g-theorem.Comment: 29 page

Real Analysis, Quantitative Topology, and Geometric Complexity

Contents 1 Mappings and distortion 2 The mathematics of good behavior much of the time, and the BMO frame of mind 3 Finite polyhedra and combinatorial parameterization problems 4 Quantitative topology, and calculus on singular spaces 5 Uniform rectifiability Appendices A Fourier transform calculations B Mappings with branching C More on existence and behavior of homeomorphisms D Doing pretty well with spaces which may not have nice coordinates E Some simple facts related to homologyComment: 161 pages, Latex2