A famous theorem in polytope theory states that the combinatorial type of a simplicial polytope is completely determined by its facet-ridge graph. This celebrated result was proven by Blind and Mani (Aequationes Math 34(2–3):287–297, 1987, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01830678 ), via a non-constructive proof using topological tools from homology theory. An elegant constructive proof was given by Kalai shortly after. In their original paper, Blind and Mani asked whether their result can be extended to simplicial spheres, and a positive answer to their question was conjectured by Kalai (2009, https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/telling-a-simple-polytope-from-its-graph/ ). In this paper, we show that Kalai’s conjecture holds in the particular case of Knutson and Miller’s spherical subword complexes. This family of simplicial spheres arises in the context of Coxeter groups, and is conjectured to be polytopal. In contrast, not all manifolds are reconstructible. We show two explicit examples, namely the torus and the projective plane.

An empty simplex is a lattice simplex in which vertices are the only lattice points. We show two constructions leading to the first known empty simplices of width larger than their dimension: ◦ We introduce cyclotomic simplices and exhaustively compute all the cyclotomic simplices of dimension $10$ and volume up to $2^{31}$ . Among them, we find five empty ones of width $11$ and none of larger width. ◦ Using circulant matrices of a very specific form, we construct empty simplices of arbitrary dimension d and width growing asymptotically as $d/\operatorname {\mathrm {arcsinh}}(1) \sim 1.1346\,d$ .

It is broadly known that any parallelepiped tiles space by translating copies of itself along its edges. In earlier work relating to higher-dimensional sandpile groups, the second author discovered a novel construction which fragments the parallelepiped into a collection of smaller tiles. These tiles fill space with the same symmetry as the larger parallelepiped. Their volumes are equal to the components of the multi-row Laplace determinant expansion, so this construction only works when all of these signs are non-negative (or non-positive). In this work, we extend the construction to work for all parallelepipeds, without requiring the non-negative condition. This naturally gives tiles with negative volume, which we understand to mean canceling out tiles with positive volume. In fact, with this cancellation, we prove that every point in space is contained in exactly one more tile with positive volume than tile with negative volume. This is a natural definition for a signed tiling. Our main technique is to show that the net number of signed tiles doesn’t change as a point moves through space. This is a relatively indirect proof method, and the underlying structure of these tilings remains mysterious.

The Heawood graph is a remarkable graph that played a fundamental role in the development of the theory of graph colorings on surfaces in the 19th and 20th centuries. Based on permutahedral tilings, we introduce a generalization of the classical Heawood graph indexed by a sequence of positive integers. We show that the resulting generalized Heawood graphs are toroidal graphs, which are dual to higher dimensional triangulated tori. We also present explicit combinatorial formulas for their $f$-vectors and study their automorphism groups.

In pioneering works of Meyer and of McMullen in the early 1970s, the set of Minkowski summands of a polytope was shown to be a polyhedral cone called the type cone. Explicit computations of type cones are in general intractable. Nevertheless, we show that the type cone of the product of simplices is simplicial. This remarkably simple result derives from insights about rainbow point configurations and the work of McMullen.

Unique Sink Orientations (USOs) of cubes can be used to capture the combinatorial structure of many essential algebraic and geometric problems. For various structural and algorithmic questions, including enumeration of USOs and algorithm analysis, it is crucial to have systematic constructions of USOs. While some construction methods for USOs already exist, each one of them has some significant downside. Most of the construction methods have limited expressivity -- USOs with some desired properties cannot be constructed. In contrast, the phase flips of Schurr can construct all USOs, but the operation is not well understood. We were inspired by techniques from cube tilings of space; we expand upon existing techniques in the area to develop generalized rewriting rules for USOs. These rewriting rules are a new construction framework which can be applied to all USOs. The rewriting rules can generate every USO using only USOs of lower dimension. The effect of any specific rewriting rule on an USO is simple to understand. A special case of our construction produces a new elementary transformation of USOs, which we call a partial swap. We further investigate the relationship between partial swaps and phase flips and generalize partial swaps to phase swaps.

If a pure simplicial complex is partitionable, then its h-vector has a combinatorial interpretation in terms of any partitioning of the complex. Given a non-partitionable complex Δ, we construct a complex Γ ⊇ Δ of the same dimension such that both Γ and the relative complex ( Γ , Δ ) are partitionable. This allows us to rewrite the h-vector of any pure simplicial complex as the difference of two h-vectors of partitionable complexes, giving an analogous interpretation of the h-vector of a non-partitionable complex. By contrast, for a given complex Δ it is not always possible to find a complex Γ such that both Γ and ( Γ , Δ ) are Cohen–Macaulay. We characterize when this is possible, and we show that the construction of such a Γ in this case is remarkably straightforward. We end with a note on a similar notion for shellability and a connection to Simon’s conjecture on extendable shellability for uniform matroids.

In pioneering works of Meyer and of McMullen in the early 1970s, the set of Minkowski summands of a polytope was shown to be a polyhedral cone called the type cone. Explicit computations of type cones are in general intractable. Nevertheless, we show that the type cone of the product of simplices is simplicial. This remarkably simple result derives from insights about rainbow point configurations and the work of McMullen.

In 1993 Stanley showed that if a simplicial complex is acyclic over some field, then its face poset can be decomposed into disjoint rank 1 boolean intervals whose minimal faces together form a subcomplex. Stanley further conjectured that complexes with a higher notion of acyclicity could be decomposed in a similar way using boolean intervals of higher rank. We provide an explicit counterexample to this conjecture. We also prove a version of the conjecture for boolean trees and show that the original conjecture holds when this notion of acyclicity is as high as possible.

It is well-known since the time of the Greeks that two disjoint circles in the plane have four common tangent lines. Cappell et al. proved a generalization of this fact for properly separated strictly convex bodies in higher dimensions. We have shown that the same generalization applies for arbitrary convex bodies. When the number of convex sets involved is equal to the dimension, we obtain an alternative combinatorial proof of Bisztriczky's theorem on the number of common tangents to d separated convex bodies in ^d.

It is well-known since the time of the Greeks that two disjoint circles in the plane have four common tangent lines. Cappell et al. proved a generalization of this fact for properly separated strictly convex bodies in higher dimensions.We have shown that the same generalization applies for polytopes.When the number of convex sets involved is equal to the dimension, we obtain an alternative combinatorial proof of Bisztriczky's theorem on the number of common tangents to $d$ separated convex bodies in $\Rr^d$.

We define and study the notion of a minimal Cohen-Macaulay simplicial complex. We prove that any Cohen-Macaulay complex is shelled over a minimal one in our sense, and we give sufficient conditions for a complex to be minimal Cohen-Macaulay. We show that many interesting examples of Cohen-Macaulay complexes in combinatorics are minimal, including Rudin's ball, Ziegler's ball, the dunce hat, and recently discovered non-partitionable Cohen-Macaulay complexes. We further provide various ways to construct such complexes.

For $3$-dimensional convex polytopes, inscribability is a classical property that is relatively well-understood due to its relation with Delaunay subdivisions of the plane and hyperbolic geometry. In particular, inscribability can be tested in polynomial time, and for every $f$-vector of $3$-polytopes, there exists an inscribable polytope with that $f$-vector. For higher-dimensional polytopes, much less is known. Of course, for any inscribable polytope, all of its lower-dimensional faces need to be inscribable, but this condition does not appear to be very strong. We observe non-trivial new obstructions to the inscribability of polytopes that arise when imposing that a certain inscribable face be inscribed. Using this obstruction, we show that the duals of the $4$-dimensional cyclic polytopes with at least $8$ vertices---all of whose faces are inscribable---are not inscribable. This result is optimal in the following sense: We prove that the duals of the cyclic $4$-polytopes with up to $7$ vertices are, in fact, inscribable. Moreover, we interpret this obstruction combinatorially as a forbidden subposet of the face lattice of a polytope, show that $d$-dimensional cyclic polytopes with at least $d+4$ vertices are not circumscribable, and that no dual of a neighborly $4$-polytope with $8$ vertices, that is, no polytope with $f$-vector $(20,40,28,8)$, is inscribable.

We investigate generalized notions of the nerve complex for the facets of a simplicial complex. We show that the homologies of these higher nerve complexes determine the depth of the Stanley-Reisner ring k[Δ] as well as the f-vector and h-vector of Δ. We present, as an application, a formula for computing regularity of monomial ideals.

Blind and Mani, and later Kalai, showed that the face lattice of a simple polytope is determined by its graph, namely its 1-skeleton. Call a vertex of a d -polytope nonsimple if the number of edges incident to it is more than d . We show that (1) the face lattice of any d -polytope with at most two nonsimple vertices is determined by its 1-skeleton; (2) the face lattice of any d -polytope with at most d-2 nonsimple vertices is determined by its 2-skeleton; and (3) for any d>3 there are two d -polytopes with d-1 nonsimple vertices, isomorphic (d-3) -skeleta and nonisomorphic face lattices. In particular, the result (1) is best possible for 4-polytopes.

In this paper, we present a minimal counterexample to a conjecture of Perles that answers a question of Haase and Ziegler. The example is a simple 4-polytope that has an induced 3-connected 3-regular subgraph, whose graph complement is connected. This subgraph is planar and not the graph of a facet of the polytope.

We present a partial description of which polytopes are reconstructible from their graphs. This is an extension of work by Blind and Mani (1987) and Kalai (1988), which showed that simple polytopes can be reconstructed from their graphs. In particular, we introduce a notion of $h$-nearly simple and prove that 1-nearly simple and 2-nearly simple polytopes are reconstructible from their graphs. We also give an example of a 3-nearly simple polytope which is not reconstructible from its graph. Furthermore, we give a partial list of polytopes which are reconstructible from their graphs in an entirely non-constructive way.