The face ideal of a simplicial complex

Abstract

Given a simplicial complex we associate to it a squarefree monomial ideal which we call the face ideal of the simplicial complex, and show that it has linear quotients. It turns out that its Alexander dual is a whisker complex. We apply this construction in particular to chain and antichain ideals of a finite partially ordered set. We also introduce so-called higher dimensional whisker complexes and show that their independence complexes are shellable.