Cores of simplicial complexes (Q958242)

From the summary: ``We introduce a method to reduce the study of the topology of a simplicial complex to that of a simpler one. Applying this method to complexes arising from graphs, we give topological meaning to classical graph invariants. As a consequence we answer some questions raised by \textit{R. Ehrenborg} and \textit{G. Hetyei} [Eur. J. Comb. 27, 906--923 (2006; Zbl 1090.05075)] on the independence complex and the dominance complex in a forest and obtain improved algorithms to compute their homotopy types.'' The notion of a core refers to the face ring where a simplicial complex is represented as a monomial ideal \(I\) in a polynomial ring over the integers. The core is defined in terms of certain maximal resolutions. Spherical and conical resolutions correspond to spheres and cones. One of the main results states that in the spherical case all maximal resolutions have the same depth and that there is a unique core up to permutation of the variables.