Sphere Representations, Stacked Polytopes, and the Colin de Verdière Number of a Graph

We prove that a $k$-tree can be viewed as a subgraph of a special type of $(k+1)$-tree that corresponds to a stacked polytope and that these "stacked'' $(k+1)$-trees admit representations by orthogonal spheres in $\mathbb{R}^{k+1}$. As a result, we derive lower bounds for Colin de Verdière's $\mu$ of complements of partial $k$-trees and prove that $\mu(G) + \mu(\overline{G}) \geq |G| - 2$ for all chordal $G$.

A Combinatorial Proof of a Formula for Betti Numbers of a Stacked Polytope

For a simplicial complex $\Delta$, the graded Betti number $\beta_{i,j}({\bf k}[\Delta])$ of the Stanley-Reisner ring ${\bf k}[\Delta]$ over a field ${\bf k}$ has a combinatorial interpretation due to Hochster. Terai and Hibi showed that if $\Delta$ is the boundary complex of a $d$-dimensional stacked polytope with $n$ vertices for $d\geq3$, then $\beta_{k-1,k}({\bf k}[\Delta])=(k-1){n-d\choose k}$. We prove this combinatorially.

The cd-index of Bruhat Intervals

We study flag enumeration in intervals in the Bruhat order on a Coxeter group by means of a structural recursion on intervals in the Bruhat order. The recursion gives the isomorphism type of a Bruhat interval in terms of smaller intervals, using basic geometric operations which preserve PL sphericity and have a simple effect on the cd-index. This leads to a new proof that Bruhat intervals are PL spheres as well a recursive formula for the cd-index of a Bruhat interval. This recursive formula is used to prove that the cd-indices of Bruhat intervals span the space of cd-polynomials. The structural recursion leads to a conjecture that Bruhat spheres are "smaller" than polytopes. More precisely, we conjecture that if one fixes the lengths of $x$ and $y$, then the cd-index of a certain dual stacked polytope is a coefficientwise upper bound on the cd-indices of Bruhat intervals $[x,y]$. We show that this upper bound would be tight by constructing Bruhat intervals which are the face lattices of these dual stacked polytopes. As a weakening of a special case of the conjecture, we show that the flag h-vectors of lower Bruhat intervals are bounded above by the flag h-vectors of Boolean algebras (i. e. simplices).