Higher Segal spaces and partial groups

Abstract

The d-Segal conditions of Dyckerhoff and Kapranov are exactness properties for simplicial objects based on the geometry of cyclic polytopes in d-dimensional Euclidean space. 2-Segal spaces are also known as decomposition spaces, and most activity has focused on this case. We study the interplay of these conditions with the partial groups of Chermak, a class of symmetric simplicial sets. The d-Segal conditions simplify for symmetric simplicial objects, and take a particularly explicit form for partial groups. We show partial groups provide a rich class of d-Segal sets for d > 2, by undertaking a systematic study of the "degree" of a partial group X, namely the smallest nonnegative integer k such that X is 2k-Segal. We develop effective tools to explicitly compute the degree based on the discrete geometry of actions of partial groups, which we define and study. Applying these tools involves solving Helly-type problems for abstract closure spaces. We carry out degree computations in concrete settings, including for the punctured Weyl groups introduced here, where we find that the degree is closely related to the maximal dimension of an abelian subalgebra of the associated semisimple Lie algebra.