Erdos-Ko-Rado theorems for simplicial complexes

Russ Woodroofe

Published 2010-01-04, updated 2010-11-29Version 3

A recent framework for generalizing the Erdos-Ko-Rado Theorem, due to Holroyd, Spencer, and Talbot, defines the Erdos-Ko-Rado property for a graph in terms of the graph's independent sets. Since the family of all independent sets of a graph forms a simplicial complex, it is natural to further generalize the Erdos-Ko-Rado property to an arbitrary simplicial complex. An advantage of working in simplicial complexes is the availability of algebraic shifting, a powerful shifting (compression) technique, which we use to verify a conjecture of Holroyd and Talbot in the case of sequentially Cohen-Macaulay near-cones.