Topology of the immediate snapshot complexes (Q471457)

The immediate snapshot complexes were introduced as combinatorial models for the protocol complexes in the context of theoretical distributed computing. It is known that these complexes are always pure and that they are pseudomanifolds. In this paper, the author proves two new independent topological properties. First it is shown that immediate snapshot complexes are collapsible (i.e. have a sequence of collapses leading to a point). Secondly, it is shown that these complexes are homeomorphic to closed balls. Specifically, given any immediate snapshot complex \(P(\overline{r})\), the author shows that there exists a homeomorphism \(\phi:\Delta^{|\mathrm{supp}\;\overline{r}|-1}\to P(\overline{r})\) such that \(\phi(\sigma)\) is a subcomplex of \(P(\overline{r})\) whenever \(\sigma\) is a simplex in the simplicial complex \(\Delta^{|\mathrm{supp}\;\overline{r}|-1}\).