# Mathematical Sciences Research Institute

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# Seminar

GTC Graduate Seminar October 02, 2017 (03:30 PM PDT - 04:30 PM PDT)
Parent Program: Geometric and Topological Combinatorics MSRI: Baker Board Room
Speaker(s) Joseph Doolittle (University of Kansas), Thomas McConville (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Description No Description
Video
The standard nerve of a covering $U=\{U_1, \ldots U_j\}$ of some topological space $X$ is the simplicial complex whose faces are subsets $\sigma$ of $U$ such that $\bigcap_{U_i \in \sigma} U_i \neq \emptyset$. In this talk, we introduce a generalization of this definition, and investigate some of its properties when we restrict $X$ to be a simplicial complex, and let $U$ be the set of its facets. We then follow a generalization of a construction given by Grunbaum for the standard nerve to obtain a simplicial complex whose nerve is some desired complex. This generalized construction will give a reconstruction result for simplicial complexes. The generalized nerve is a very powerful tool, and many results have already been discovered. It will have applications in many problems across topological combinatorics.