Hilbert function and facet ideals of products of simplicial complexes (Q2065343)

A simplicial complex \(\Delta\) on a (finite) vertex set \(V\) is a collection of subsets of \(V\) such that for any \(F \in \Delta\) and \(G \subseteq F\), one has \(G \in \Delta\). Any element of \(\Delta\) is called a face of \(\Delta\) and maximal faces of \(\Delta\) under inclusion are called facets of \(\Delta\). The dimension of \(\Delta\), denoted by \(\dim \Delta\), is \(\max\{|F|-1 \colon \; F\in \Delta\}\). Any graph can be viewed as a \(1\)-dimensional simplicial complex. In graph theory, for given graphs \(G_1\) and \(G_2\), there are some well-known operations such as Cartesian product, tensor product, union, join, corona product, etc. to obtain new non-trivial graphs. In the paper under review, the authors generalized these operations from graphs to simplicial complexes and then they investigate the Hilbert series of the Stanley-Reisner ring under these operations. In the following we briefly review these operations on simplicial complexes. Let \(\Delta_1\) and \(\Delta_2\) be two simplicial complexes on disjoint vertex sets \(V_1\) and \(V_2\) respectively. \begin{itemize} \item \textbf{Union.} The union of \(\Delta_1\) and \(\Delta_2\), denoted by \(\Delta_1 \cup \Delta_2\) is the simplicial complex on \(V_1 \cup V_2\) whose faces are \(\{F \subseteq V_1 \cup V_2 \colon F \in \Delta_1 \text{ or } F \in \Delta_2 \}\). \item \textbf{Join.} The join of \(\Delta_1\) and \(\Delta_2\), denoted by \(\Delta_1 + \Delta_2\), is also a simplicial complex on \(V_1 \cup V_2\) defined as follows: \[ \Delta_1+\Delta_2 = \Delta_1 \cup \Delta_2 \cup \langle \{v_1, v_2\} \colon v_1 \in V_1 \text{ and } v_2 \in V_2 \rangle. \] \item \textbf{Cartesian product.} The cartesian product \(\Delta_1\otimes \Delta_2\) is a simplicial complex with vertex set \(V_1 \times V_2\) such that any set \(F = \{(r_1, s_1), \ldots, (r_n, s_m)\}\) is a facet of \(\Delta_1 \otimes \Delta_2\) if and only if either \(r_1 = \cdots = r_n\) and \(\{s_1, \ldots, s_m\}\) is facet of \(\Delta_2\) or \(s_1 = \cdots = s_m\) and \(\{r_1,\ldots, r_n\}\) is a facet \(\Delta_1\). \item \textbf{Tensor product or Kronecker product.} The tensor product or Kronecker product \(\Delta_1 \times \Delta_2\) is a simplicial complex with vertex set \(V_1 \times V_2\) such that any set \(F = \{(r_1, s_1), \ldots, (r_n, s_m)\}\) is a face of \(\Delta_1 \times \Delta_2\) if and only if \(\{r_1,\ldots, r_n\} \in \Delta_1\) and \(\{s_1, \ldots, s_m\}\in \Delta_2\). \item \textbf{Strong product.} The strong product \(\Delta_1\boxtimes\Delta_2\) is a simplicial complex with vertex set \(V_1 \times V_2\) such that any set \(F = \{(r_1, s_1), \ldots, (r_n, s_m)\}\) is a facet of \(\Delta_1 \boxtimes \Delta_2\) if and only if either \begin{itemize} \item[] \(r_1 = \cdots = r_n\) and \(\{s_1, \ldots, s_m\}\) is facet of \(\Delta_2\), or \item[] \(s_1 = \cdots = s_m\) and \(\{r_1,\ldots, r_n\}\) is a facet \(\Delta_1\), or \item[] \(\{r_1,\ldots, r_n\}\) is a facet of \(\Delta_1\) and \(\{s_1, \ldots, s_m\}\) is a facet of \(\Delta_2\). \end{itemize} \item \textbf{Corona product.} The Corona product \(\Delta_1 \odot \Delta_2\) is obtained by taking one copy of \(\Delta_1\) and \(|V_1|\) copies of \(\Delta_2\) such that each vertex of the \(i\)-th copy of \(\Delta_2\) is joined to the \(i\)-th vertex of \(\Delta_1\), for all \(1 \leq i \leq |V_1|\). \end{itemize}