Shelling polyhedral 3-balls and 4-polytopes (Q1380773)

The paper gives a historical survey of constructions of nonshellable triangulations of three-dimensional balls. After listing some of the most remarkable constructions, the author presents the currently smallest known nonshellable polytope with 10 vertices and 21 facets. The author analyses the concept of extendable shellability, i.e. the problem of finding for every shellable \((d-1)\)-ball \(\Gamma_0\) in the boundary of a \(d\)-polytope \(P\), a shelling of the boundary of \(P\) that extends a shelling of the ball \(\Gamma_0\). The author proves that most simplicial 4-polytopes are not extendably shellable. He also gives examples of simplicial Delaunay 4-polytopes and simple 4-polytopes that are not extendably shellable.