Face vectors of simplicial cell decompositions of manifolds

Abstract

In this paper, we study face vectors of simplicial posets that are the face posets of cell decompositions of topological manifolds without boundary. We characterize all possible face vectors of simplicial posets whose geometric realizations are homeomorphic to the product of spheres. As a corollary, we obtain the characterization of face vectors of simplicial posets whose geometric realizations are odd dimensional manifolds without boundary.