Vertex decompositions of two-dimensional complexes and graphs

We investigate families of two-dimensional simplicial complexes defined in terms of vertex decompositions. They include nonevasive complexes, strongly collapsible complexes of Barmak and Miniam and analogues of 2-trees of Harary and Palmer. We investigate the complexity of recognition problems for those families and some of their combinatorial properties. Certain results follow from analogous decomposition techniques for graphs. For example, we prove that it is NP-complete to decide if a graph can be reduced to a discrete graph by a sequence of removals of vertices of degree 3.Comment: Improved presentation and fixed some bug

Clique complexes and graph powers

We study the behaviour of clique complexes of graphs under the operation of taking graph powers. As an example we compute the clique complexes of powers of cycles, or, in other words, the independence complexes of circular complete graphs.Comment: V3: final versio

Face numbers of down-sets

We compare various viewpoints on down-sets (simplicial complexes), illustrating how the combinatorial inclusion-exclusion principle may serve as an alternative to more advanced methods of studying their face numbers.Comment: 3 pages, accepted to Amer. Math. Monthly, v2: typos fixe

Transitivity is not a (big) restriction on homotopy types

For every simplicial complex K there exists a vertex-transitive simplicial complex homotopy equivalent to a wedge of copies of K with some copies of the circle. It follows that every simplicial complex can occur as a homotopy wedge summand in some vertex-transitive complex. One can even demand that the vertex-transitive complex is the clique complex of a Cayley graph or that it is facet-transitive

Upper bound theorem for odd-dimensional flag triangulations of manifolds

We prove that among all flag triangulations of manifolds of odd dimension 2r-1 with sufficiently many vertices the unique maximizer of the entries of the f-, h-, g- and gamma-vector is the balanced join of r cycles. Our proof uses methods from extremal graph theory.Comment: Clarifications and new references, title has change