A cell complex in number theory

Let De_n be the simplicial complex of squarefree positive integers less than or equal to n ordered by divisibility. It is known that the asymptotic rate of growth of its Euler characteristic (the Mertens function) is closely related to deep properties of the prime number system. In this paper we study the asymptotic behavior of the individual Betti numbers and of their sum. We show that De_n has the homotopy type of a wedge of spheres, and that as n tends to infinity: \sum \be_k(\De_n) = \frac{2n}{\pi^2} + O(n^{\theta}),\;\; \mbox{for all} \theta > \frac{17}{54}. We also study a CW complex tDe_n that extends the previous simplicial complex. In tDe_n all numbers up to n correspond to cells and its Euler characteristic is the summatory Liouville function. This cell complex is shown to be homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres, and as n tends to infinity: \sum \be_k(\tDe_n) = \frac{n}{3} + O(n^{\theta}),\;\; \mbox{for all} \theta > \frac{22}{27}.Comment: 16 page

Saturated simplicial complexes

AbstractAmong shellable complexes a certain class has maximal modular homology, and these are the so-called saturated complexes. We extend the notion of saturation to arbitrary pure complexes and give a survey of their properties. It is shown that saturated complexes can be characterized via the p-rank of incidence matrices and via the structure of links. We show that rank-selected subcomplexes of saturated complexes are also saturated, and that order complexes of geometric lattices are saturated

A comparison theorem for ff-vectors of simplicial polytopes

Let $f_i(P)$ denote the number of $i$-dimensional faces of a convex polytope $P$. Furthermore, let $S(n,d)$ and $C(n,d)$ denote, respectively, the stacked and the cyclic $d$-dimensional polytopes on $n$ vertices. Our main result is that for every simplicial $d$-polytope $P$, if $$f_r(S(n_1,d))\le f_r(P) \le f_r(C(n_2,d))$$ for some integers $n_1, n_2$ and $r$, then $$f_s(S(n_1,d))\le f_s(P) \le f_s(C(n_2,d))$$ for all $s$ such that $r<s$. For $r=0$ these inequalities are the well-known lower and upper bound theorems for simplicial polytopes. The result is implied by a certain ``comparison theorem'' for $f$-vectors, formulated in Section 4. Among its other consequences is a similar lower bound theorem for centrally-symmetric simplicial polytopes.Comment: 8 pages. Revised and corrected version. To appear in "Pure and Applied Mathematics Quarterly

The connectivity of the basis graph of a branching greedoid

A result of Korte and Lovász states that the basis graph of every 2- connected greedoid is connected. We prove that the basis graph of every 3-connected branching greedoid is ( -- 1)-connected, where is the minimum in-degree (disregarding the root) of the underlying rooted directed (multi) graph. We also give examples showing that this results is (in some sense) best possible

Operads of compatible structures and weighted partitions

In this paper we describe operads encoding two different kinds of compatibility of algebraic structures. We show that there exist decompositions of these in terms of black and white products and we prove that they are Koszul for a large class of algebraic structures by using the poset method of B. Vallette. In particular we show that this is true for the operads of compatible Lie, associative and pre-Lie algebras.Comment: 16 pages, main result about Koszulness generalized to a large class of compatible structure

Antichain cutsets of strongly connected posets

Rival and Zaguia showed that the antichain cutsets of a finite Boolean lattice are exactly the level sets. We show that a similar characterization of antichain cutsets holds for any strongly connected poset of locally finite height. As a corollary, we get such a characterization for semimodular lattices, supersolvable lattices, Bruhat orders, locally shellable lattices, and many more. We also consider a generalization to strongly connected hypergraphs having finite edges.Comment: 12 pages; v2 contains minor fixes for publicatio

Koszul incidence algebras, affine semigroups, and Stanley-Reisner ideals

We prove a theorem unifying three results from combinatorial homological and commutative algebra, characterizing the Koszul property for incidence algebras of posets and affine semigroup rings, and characterizing linear resolutions of squarefree monomial ideals. The characterization in the graded setting is via the Cohen-Macaulay property of certain posets or simplicial complexes, and in the more general nongraded setting, via the sequential Cohen-Macaulay property.Comment: 31 pages, 1 figure. Minor changes from previous version. To appear in Advances in Mathematic

A note on blockers in posets

The blocker $A^{*}$ of an antichain $A$ in a finite poset $P$ is the set of elements minimal with the property of having with each member of $A$ a common predecessor. The following is done: 1. The posets $P$ for which $A^{**}=A$ for all antichains are characterized. 2. The blocker $A^*$ of a symmetric antichain in the partition lattice is characterized. 3. Connections with the question of finding minimal size blocking sets for certain set families are discussed