Cohen-Macaulay cell complexes

Abstract

We show that a finite regular cell complex with the intersection property is a Cohen-Macaulay space iff the top enriched cohomology module is the only nonvanishing one. We prove a comprehensive generalization of Balinski's theorem on convex polytopes. Also we show that for any Cohen-Macaulay cell complex as above, although there is no generalization of the Stanley-Reisner ring of simplicial complexes, there is a generalization of its canonical module.