Shellability of polyhedral joins of simplicial complexes and its application to graph theory (Q2088694)

Summary: We investigate the shellability of the polyhedral join \(\mathcal{Z}^\ast_M (K, L)\) of simplicial complexes \(K\), \(M\) and a subcomplex \(L \subset K\). We give sufficient conditions and necessary conditions on \((K, L)\) for \(\mathcal{Z}^\ast_M (K, L)\) being shellable. In particular, we show that for some pairs \((K, L), \mathcal{Z}^\ast_M (K, L)\) becomes shellable regardless of whether \(M\) is shellable or not. Polyhedral joins can be applied to graph theory as the independence complex of a certain generalized version of lexicographic products of graphs which we define in this paper. The graph obtained from two graphs \(G\), \(H\) by attaching one copy of \(H\) to each vertex of \(G\) is a special case of this generalized lexicographic product and we give a result on the shellability of the independence complex of this graph by applying the above results.