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Subdivisions, shellability, and collapsibility of products

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Abstract

We prove that the second derived subdivision of any rectilinear triangulation of any convex polytope is shellable. Also, we prove that the first derived subdivision of every rectilinear triangulation of any convex 3-dimensional polytope is shellable. This complements Mary Ellen Rudin's classical example of a non-shellable rectilinear triangulation of the tetrahedron. Our main tool is a new relative notion of shellability that characterizes the behavior of shellable complexes under gluing.

As a corollary, we obtain a new characterization of the PL property in terms of shellability: A triangulation of a sphere or of a ball is PL if and only if it becomes shellable after sufficiently many derived subdivisions. This improves on PL approximation theorems by Whitehead, Zeeman and Glaser, and answers a question by Billera and Swartz.

We also show that any contractible complex can be made collapsible by repeatedly taking products with an interval. This strengthens results by Dierker and Lickorish, and resolves a conjecture of Oliver. Finally, we give an example that this behavior extends to non-evasiveness, thereby answering a question of Welker.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Einstein Institute for Mathematics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Karim A. Adiprasito

  2. Department of Mathematics, University of Miami, 1365 Memorial Drive, Coral Gables, FL, 33134, USA

    Bruno Benedetti

Authors
  1. Karim A. Adiprasito
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  2. Bruno Benedetti
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Correspondence to Karim A. Adiprasito.

Additional information

This work was supported by the DFG within the research training group “Methods for Discrete Structures” (GRK1408) and by the Romanian NASR, CNCS — UEFISCDI, project PN-II-ID-PCE-2011-3-0533.

Supported by the Swedish Research Council, grant “Triangulerade Mångfalder, Knutteori i diskrete Morseteori”, and by the DFG grant “Discretization in Geometry and Dynamics”.

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Adiprasito, K.A., Benedetti, B. Subdivisions, shellability, and collapsibility of products. Combinatorica 37, 1–30 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00493-016-3149-8

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