Shellability of Polyhedral Joins of Simplicial Complexes and Its Application to Graph Theory

Abstract: We investigate the shellability of the polyhedral join $\mathcal{Z}^*_M (K, L)$ of simplicial complexes $K, M$ and a subcomplex $L \subset K$. We give sufficient conditions and necessary conditions on $(K, L)$ for $\mathcal{Z}^*_M (K, L)$ being shellable. In particular, we show that for some pairs $(K, L)$, $\mathcal{Z}^*_M (K, L)$ becomes shellable regardless of whether $M$ is shellable or not. Polyhedral joins can be applied to graph theory as the independence complex of a certain generalized version of lexicographic products of graphs which we define in this paper. The graph obtained from two graphs $G, H$ by attaching one copy of $H$ to each vertex of $G$ is a special case of this generalized lexicographic product and we give a result on the shellability of the independence complex of this graph by applying the above results.