Homotopy colimits of diagrams over posets and variations on a theorem of Thomason (Q505358)

In this article, the authors study the Grothendieck construction on functors from a finite poset (viewed as a category) to the category of finite posets, which turns out to be a finite poset itself. The main result of this work is a generalization of \textit{R. W. Thomason}'s theorem [Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 85, 91--109 (1979; Zbl 0392.18001)] for homotopy colimits of such diagrams. The authors apply this result to show that if \(P\) is a finite poset then the homotopy colimit of a diagram of finite simplicial complexes over the scheme \(P\) is weakly homotopy equivalent to the Grothendieck construction on a diagram over \(P\) of their face posets. They also combine the Grothendieck constructions as above with reduction methods for posets [\textit{R. E. Stong}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 123, 325--340 (1966; Zbl 0151.29502); \textit{J. A. Barmak}, Algebraic topology of finite topological spaces and applications. Berlin: Springer (2011; Zbl 1235.55001)] to give conditions under which the removal of a point of the finite poset which acts as scheme induces a homotopy equivalence (or weak homotopy equivalence) between the Grothendieck constructions on the corresponding diagrams. As a corollary of these results they obtain Quillen's theorem A for posets [\textit{D. Quillen}, Lect. Notes Math. 341, 85--147 (1973; Zbl 0292.18004); \textit{J. A. Barmak}, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 118, 2445--2453 (2011; Zbl 1234.05237)] and a combinatorial version of the Bousfield-Kan cofinality theorem [\textit{A. K. Bousfield} and \textit{D. M. Kan}, Homotopy limits, completions and localizations. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer (1972; Zbl 0259.55004)].