Kalai's squeezed spheres are shellable (Q1580759): Difference between revisions

In [Discrete Comput. Geom. 3, 1-14 (1988; Zbl 0631.52009)] \textit{G. Kalai} constructed an extremely large class of simplicial spheres as the boundaries of shellable (squeezed) balls. By a result of \textit{U. Pachner} [Discrete Math. 81, No. 1, 37-47 (1990; Zbl 0698.52003)] such spheres are piecewise linear. The author proves that Kalai's spheres are, in fact, shellable. In the case of the dimension~\(d\) of the sphere being even an explicit shelling order of the facets is given. The result for the odd-dimensional case follows from combining a reverse lexicographic shelling of a squeezed \(d\)-ball with the previosuly constructed shelling order for its \((d-1)\)-dimensional boundary. Although examples of non-shellable (and even non-constructible) spheres are known [e.g.\ see \textit{M. Hachimori} and \textit{G. M. Ziegler} [Math. Z. 235, No. 1, 159-171 (2000)], the result of the paper under review raises the question how large the class of non-shellable (or non-constructible) spheres is.