An upper bound on Pachner moves relating geometric triangulations (Q2230909)

Suppose that \(A\) is an \(r\)-simplex in a simplicial complex \(K\) of dimension \(n\) and that the link of \(A\) in \(K\) \(lk(A,K) = \partial B\) for some \((n-r)\)-simplex \(B \notin K\). The Pachner move \(\kappa(A,B)\) consists of changing \(K\) by removing \(A\star \partial B\) and inserting \(\partial A \star B\). In two dimensions an example of Pachner move switches the diagonals in the diamond formed by two adjacent simplexes. This paper shows that for a closed hyperbolic, spherical, or Euclidean manifold any two geometric triangulations are related by a sequence of Pachner moves and barycentric subdivisions of bounded length. The restrictions on the geometry of the manifold are needed to obtain geometric simplicial triangulations of the manifold for which each simplex is isometric to to a hyperbolic, spherical or Euclidean simplex. By providing a bound on the number of moves required the authors obtain an algorithm that solves the homeomorphism problem for hyperbolic or low dimensional spherical manifolds.