On the cd-index and -vector of S^-shellable CW-spheres

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Publication:444209



Abstract: We show that the gamma-vector of the order complex of any polytope is the f-vector of a balanced simplicial complex. This is done by proving this statement for a subclass of Stanley's S-shellable spheres which includes all polytopes. The proof shows that certain parts of the cd-index, when specializing c=1 and considering the resulted polynomial in d, are the f-polynomials of simplicial complexes that can be colored with "few" colors. We conjecture that the cd-index of a regular CW-sphere is itself the flag f-vector of a colored simplicial complex in a certain sense.


The \(\gamma\)-vector of a simplicial complex was introduced by \textit{S. R. Gal} [Discrete Comput. Geom. 34, No. 2, 269--284 (2005; Zbl 1085.52005)] who conjectured that the \(\gamma\)-vector of a flag homology sphere is nonnegative. \textit{E. Nevo} and \textit{T. K. Petersen} [Discrete Comput. Geom. 45, No. 3, 503--521 (2011; Zbl 1231.52009)] conjectured that the \(\gamma\)-vector of a flag homology sphere is also the \(f\)-vector of a balanced simplicial complex. The latter conjecture was verified for barycentric subdivisions of simplicial homology spheres [\textit{E. Nevo}, \textit{T. K. Petersen} and \textit{B. E. Tenner}, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 118, No. 4, 1364--1380 (2011; Zbl 1231.05307)]. The present paper extends the validity of the Nevo-Petersen conjecture to barycentric subdivisions of \(S^*\)-shellable regular \(CW\)-spheres. This class of regular \(CW\)-spheres is obtained by slightly modifying Stanley's definition of \(S\)-shellability [\textit{R. P. Stanley}, Math. Z. 216, No. 3, 483--499 (1994; Zbl 0805.06003)], and it contains the class of boundary complexes of polytopes.











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