No Arabic abstract
In this article, we discuss the vertex decomposability of three well-studied simplicial complexes associated to forests. In particular, we show that the bounded degree complex of a forest and the complex of directed trees of a multidiforest are vertex decomposable. We then prove that the non-cover complex of a forest is either contractible or homotopy equivalent to a sphere. Finally, we provide a complete characterization of forests whose non-cover complexes are vertex decomposable.
We say that a pure $d$-dimensional simplicial complex $Delta$ on $n$ vertices is shelling completable if $Delta$ can be realized as the initial sequence of some shelling of $Delta_{n-1}^{(d)}$, the $d$-skeleton of the $(n-1)$-dimensional simplex. A well-known conjecture of Simon posits that any shellable complex is shelling completable. In this note we prove that vertex decomposable complexes are shelling completable. In fact we show that if $Delta$ is a vertex decomposable complex then there exists an ordering of its ground set $V$ such that adding the revlex smallest missing $(d+1)$-subset of $V$ results in a complex that is again vertex decomposable. We explore applications to matroids, shifted complexes, as well as $k$-vertex decomposable complexes. We also show that if $Delta$ is a $d$-dimensional complex on at most $d+3$ vertices then the notions of shellable, vertex decomposable, shelling completable, and extendably shellable are all equivalent.
A well-known conjecture of Richard Stanley posits that the $h$-vector of the independence complex of a matroid is a pure ${mathcal O}$-sequence. The conjecture has been established for various classes but is open for graphic matroids. A biconed graph is a graph with two specified `coning vertices, such that every vertex of the graph is connected to at least one coning vertex. The class of biconed graphs includes coned graphs, Ferrers graphs, and complete multipartite graphs. We study the $h$-vectors of graphic matroids arising from biconed graphs, providing a combinatorial interpretation of their entries in terms of `edge-rooted forests of the underlying graph. This generalizes constructions of Kook and Lee who studied the Mobius coinvariant (the last nonzero entry of the $h$-vector) of graphic matroids of complete bipartite graphs. We show that allowing for partially edge-rooted forests gives rise to a pure multicomplex whose face count recovers the $h$-vector, establishing Stanleys conjecture for this class of matroids.
Given a simple undirected graph $G$ there is a simplicial complex $mathrm{Ind}(G)$, called the independence complex, whose faces correspond to the independent sets of $G$. This is a well studied concept because it provides a fertile ground for interactions between commutative algebra, graph theory and algebraic topology. One of the line of research pursued by many authors is to determine the graph classes for which the associated independence complex is Cohen-Macaulay. For example, it is known that when $G$ is a chordal graph the complex $mathrm{Ind}(G)$ is in fact vertex decomposable, the strongest condition in the Cohen-Macaulay ladder. In this article we consider a generalization of independence complex. Given $rgeq 1$, a subset of the vertex set is called $r$-independent if the connected components of the induced subgraph have cardinality at most $r$. The collection of all $r$-independent subsets of $G$ form a simplicial complex called the $r$-independence complex and is denoted by $mathrm{Ind}_r(G)$. It is known that when $G$ is a chordal graph the complex $mathrm{Ind}_r(G)$ has the homotopy type of a wedge of spheres. Hence it is natural to ask which of these complexes are shellable or even vertex decomposable. We prove, using Woodroofes chordal hypergraph notion, that these complexes are always shellable when the underlying chordal graph is a tree. Further, using the notion of vertex splittable ideals we show that for caterpillar graphs the associated $r$-independence complex is vertex decomposable for all values of $r$. We also construct chordal graphs on $2r+2$ vertices such that their $r$-independence complexes are not sequentially Cohen-Macaulay for any $r ge 2$.
A new 2-parameter family of central structures in trees, called central forests, is introduced. Miniekas $m$-center problem and McMorriss and Reids central-$k$-tree can be seen as special cases of central forests in trees. A central forest is defined as a forest $F$ of $m$ subtrees of a tree $T$, where each subtree has $k$ nodes, which minimizes the maximum distance between nodes not in $F$ and those in $F$. An $O(n(m+k))$ algorithm to construct such a central forest in trees is presented, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the tree. The algorithm either returns with a central forest, or with the largest $k$ for which a central forest of $m$ subtrees is possible. Some of the elementary properties of central forests are also studied.
The study of patterns in permutations associated with forests of binary shrubs was initiated by D. Bevan et al.. In this paper, we study five different types of rise statistics that can be associated with such permutations and find the generating functions for the distribution of such rise statistics.