A property that characterizes Euler characteristic among invariants of combinatorial manifolds (Q990747): Difference between revisions

The main result of this article asserts that the Euler characteristic is essentially the unique PL-invariant of combinatorial manifolds whose value depends only on the number of simplices of the manifold. More concretely, the author proves that if a real valued invariant (under PL-isomorphisms) of compact combinatorial manifolds depends only on the number of simplices in each dimension, then the invariant is completely determined by the Euler characteristic of the manifold and its boundary. This result is a generalization of a previous result by \textit{J. Roberts} [J. Knot Theory Ramifications 11, No.~5, 793--796 (2002; Zbl 1024.57023)] which asserts that any linear combination of the numbers of simplices which is an invariant of closed combinatorial manifolds is a multiple of the Euler characteristic.