Combinatorial Stokes formulae (Q2462340): Difference between revisions

\textit{K. Fan} [J. Comb. Theory 2, 588--602 (1967; Zbl 0149.41302)] proved a combinatorial formula in an attempt to generalize both Sperner's lemma and Tucker's lemma. In 1974, Kuhn re-proved Fan's formula in the two-dimensional case. He called his formula the combinatorial Stokes theorem because it relies the number of fully labeled simplices of the boundary of a triangulation to the number of fully labeled simplices inside the triangulation. A multilabeling allows several labels to be put on a vertex. This notion goes back to Babat, who gave in 1989 a multilabeling generalization of Sperner's lemma in order to provide a constructive proof of Gale's generalization of the KKM lemma. In 1998, \textit{S.-N. Lee} and \textit{M.-H. Shih} [Eur. J. Comb. 19, No.~8, 969--979 (1998; Zbl 0921.05038)] found the same kind of generalization for Fan's formula. The author unifies the proofs of all these results and, beyond, presents a generalized combinatorial Stokes formula containing Lee and Shih's result as well as a new and shorter combinatorial proof of Schrijver's theorem concerning Kneser graphs.