Discrete Geometry and Combinatorics Seminar

Anastasia ChavezUniversity of California at Berkeley
The Dehn-Sommerville relations and the Catalan matroid

Monday, April 25, 2016 - 2:30pm
Malott 206

The $f$-vector of a $d$-dimensional polytope $P$ stores the number of faces of each dimension. When $P$ is simplicial the Dehn-Sommerville relations condense the $f$-vector into the $g$-vector, which has length $\lceil(d+1)/2\rceil$. Thus, to determine the $f$-vector of $P$, we only need to know approximately half of its entries. This raises the question: Which $\lceil(d+1)/2\rceil$ subsets of the $f$-vector of a general simplicial polytope are sufficient to determine the whole $f$-vector? We prove that the answer is given by the Catalan matroid. This is joint work with Nicole Yamzon.