The cylinder of a relation and generalized versions of the nerve theorem (Q1985293)

In this article, the authors define the cylinder of a relation between posets extending the notion of the non-Hausdorff mapping cylinder of an order-preserving map, which was defined by \textit{J. A. Barmak} and \textit{E. G. Minian} [Adv. Math. 218, No. 1, 87--104 (2008; Zbl 1146.57034)] and is a variant of the well-known mapping cylinder of a continuous map between topological spaces. The authors prove that, under suitable assumptions, the cylinder of a relation \(\mathcal{R}\) between finite posets \(X\) and \(Y\) is simply homotopy equivalent to \(X\) (or to \(Y\)). As a consequence of these results they obtain a version of Quillen's Theorem A for relations between finite posets that specializes to a result given by Barmak and Minian in the aforementioned article (see also [\textit{J. A. Barmak}, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 118, No. 8, 2445--2453 (2011; Zbl 1234.05237)]). The authors also give \(n\)-connected and homologically \(n\)-connected versions of their results which extend similar results by \textit{D. Quillen} [Adv. Math. 28, 101--128 (1978; Zbl 0388.55007)] and \textit{A. Björner} [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 102, No. 1, 88--93 (2003; Zbl 1030.55006)]. In the last section of the article, the authors apply the previous results to obtain generalizations of the nerve theorem for finite posets and finite simplicial complexes in which the corresponding covers (by open sets or by subcomplexes) satisfy that the connected components of every non-empty intersection of sets of the cover are weakly contractible. In these generalizations, the nerve of the cover is replaced by a new poset (in the case of finite posets) or a by regular CW-complex (in the simplicial complex case) which is called \textit{completion of the nerve} and which coincides with the nerve (or with its face poset) in the case that the cover is good.