580 research outputs found
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
Combinatorial properties of the K3 surface: Simplicial blowups and slicings
The 4-dimensional abstract Kummer variety K^4 with 16 nodes leads to the K3
surface by resolving the 16 singularities. Here we present a simplicial
realization of this minimal resolution. Starting with a minimal 16-vertex
triangulation of K^4 we resolve its 16 isolated singularities - step by step -
by simplicial blowups. As a result we obtain a 17-vertex triangulation of the
standard PL K3 surface. A key step is the construction of a triangulated
version of the mapping cylinder of the Hopf map from the real projective
3-space onto the 2-sphere with the minimum number of vertices. Moreover we
study simplicial Morse functions and the changes of their levels between the
critical points. In this way we obtain slicings through the K3 surface of
various topological types.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figure
PL Morse theory in low dimensions
We discuss a PL analogue of Morse theory for PL manifolds. There are several
notions of regular and critical points. A point is homologically regular if the
homology does not change when passing through its level, it is strongly regular
if the function can serve as one coordinate in a chart. Several criteria for
strong regularity are presented. In particular we show that in low dimensions
a homologically regular point on a PL -manifold is always
strongly regular. Examples show that this fails to hold in higher dimensions . One of our constructions involves an 8-vertex embedding of the dunce
hat into a polytopal 4-sphere with 8 vertices such that a regular neighborhood
is Mazur's contractible 4-manifold.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figure
Connectivity Bounds and S-Partitions for Triangulated Manifolds
Two of the fundamental results in the theory of convex polytopes are Balinski’s Theorem on connectivity and Bruggesser and Mani’s theorem on shellability. Here we present results that attempt to generalize both results to triangulated manifolds. We obtain new connectivity bounds for complexes with certain missing faces and introduce a way to measure how far a manifold is from being shellable using S-partitions and the Stanley-Reisner Ring
Simplicial and Cellular Trees
Much information about a graph can be obtained by studying its spanning
trees. On the other hand, a graph can be regarded as a 1-dimensional cell
complex, raising the question of developing a theory of trees in higher
dimension. As observed first by Bolker, Kalai and Adin, and more recently by
numerous authors, the fundamental topological properties of a tree --- namely
acyclicity and connectedness --- can be generalized to arbitrary dimension as
the vanishing of certain cellular homology groups. This point of view is
consistent with the matroid-theoretic approach to graphs, and yields
higher-dimensional analogues of classical enumerative results including
Cayley's formula and the matrix-tree theorem. A subtlety of the
higher-dimensional case is that enumeration must account for the possibility of
torsion homology in trees, which is always trivial for graphs. Cellular trees
are the starting point for further high-dimensional extensions of concepts from
algebraic graph theory including the critical group, cut and flow spaces, and
discrete dynamical systems such as the abelian sandpile model.Comment: 39 pages (including 5-page bibliography); 5 figures. Chapter for
forthcoming IMA volume "Recent Trends in Combinatorics
Triangulations
The earliest work in topology was often based on explicit combinatorial models – usually triangulations – for the spaces being studied. Although algebraic methods in topology gradually replaced combinatorial ones in the mid-1900s, the emergence of computers later revitalized the study of triangulations. By now there are several distinct mathematical communities actively doing work on different aspects of triangulations. The goal of this workshop was to bring the researchers from these various communities together to stimulate interaction and to benefit from the exchange of ideas and methods
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