Topological finiteness for edge-vertex enumeration (Q952417)

Let \(\Delta\) be a triangulated combinatorial manifold, and let \(f_0\) be the number of vertices, and \(f_1\) be the number of edges of \(\Delta\). The author studies the question, for which affine functions \(L_{\alpha,\beta,\gamma}(\Delta) = \alpha f_1 + \beta f_0 + \gamma\) of \(f_0\) and \(f_1\) an upper or lower bound on \(L_{\alpha,\beta,\gamma}\) restricts the PL-homeomorphism types of \(\Delta\) to a finite number. The main result of the paper concerns the function \[ g_2(\Delta) = f_1 - df_0 + \binom{d+1}{2}, \] where \(d = 1 + \dim \Delta\): Theorem 0.1. Fix \(d \geq 3\) and \(g \geq 0\). Then there are only finitely many PL-homeomorphism classes of connected \((d-1)\)-dimensional combinatorial manifolds without boundary and \(g_2 \leq g\). The function \(g_2\) is a component of the so called \(g\)-vector that was extensively studied in the theory of convex polytopes. Although the constant term in the expression for \(g_2\) is not essential for the correctness of Theorem 0.1, and may well be omitted, the function \(g_2\) is convenient to use for two reasons. First, it has an interpretation as the dimension of a certain vector space. Second, \(g_2\) is additive with respect to the connected sum along a facet. The proof of Theorem 0.1 uses several combinatorial and algebraic results on the numbers of faces of combinatorial manifolds. The paper ends with a discussion of open problems.