The cylinder of a relation and generalized versions of the Nerve Theorem

Abstract

We introduce the notion of cylinder of a relation in the context of posets, extending the construction of the mapping cylinder. We establish a local-to-global result for relations, generalizing Quillen's Theorem A for order preserving maps, and derive novel formulations of the classical Nerve Theorem for posets and simplicial complexes, suitable for covers with not necessarily contractible intersections.