For topological manifolds, there is a slightly stronger notion of triangulation: a piecewise-linear triangulation is a triangulation with the extra property – defined for dimensions 0, 1, 2, . . . inductively – that the link of any simplex is a piecewise-linear sphere. The link of a simplex s in a simplicial complexK is a subcomplex of Kconsisting of the simplices t that are disjoint from s and such that both s and t are faces of some higher-dimensional simplex in K. For instance, in a two-dimensional piecewise-linear manifold formed by a set of vertices, edges, and triangles, the link of a vertex s consists of the cycle of vertices and edges surrounding s: if t is a vertex in this cycle, t and s are both endpoints of an edge of K, and if t is an edge in this cycle, it and s are both faces of a triangle of K. This cycle is homeomorphic to a circle, which is a 1-dimensional sphere. But in this article the word "triangulation" is just used to mean homeomorphic to a simplicial complex. For manifolds of dimension at most 4, any triangulation of a manifold is a piecewise linear triangulation: In any simplicial complex homeomorphic to a manifold, the link of any simplex can only be homeomorphic to a sphere. But in dimension n ≥ 5 the -fold suspension of the Poincaré sphere is a topological manifold with a triangulation that is not piecewise-linear: it has a simplex whose link is the Poincaré sphere, a three-dimensional manifold that is not homeomorphic to a sphere. This is the double suspension theorem, due to R.D. Edwards in the 1970s. The question of which manifolds have piecewise-linear triangulations has led to much research in topology. Differentiable manifolds, and subanalytic sets admit a piecewise-linear triangulation, technically by passing via the PDIFF category. Topological manifolds of dimensions 2 and 3 are always triangulable by an essentially unique triangulation ; this was proved for surfaces by Tibor Radó in the 1920s and for three-manifolds by Edwin E. Moise and R. H. Bing in the 1950s, with later simplifications by Peter Shalen. As shown independently by James Munkres, Steve Smale and J. H. C. Whitehead, each of these manifolds admits a smooth structure, unique up to diffeomorphism. In dimension 4, however, the E8 manifold does not admit a triangulation, and some compact 4-manifolds have an infinite number of triangulations, all piecewise-linear inequivalent. In dimension greater than 4, Rob Kirby and Larry Siebenmann constructed manifolds that do not have piecewise-linear triangulations . Further, Ciprian Manolescu proved that there exist compact manifolds of dimension 5 that are not homeomorphic to a simplicial complex, i.e., that do not admit a triangulation.
Explicit methods of triangulation
An important special case of topological triangulation is that of two-dimensional surfaces, or closed 2-manifolds. There is a standard proof that smooth compact surfaces can be triangulated. Indeed, if the surface is given a Riemannian metric, each point x is contained inside a small convex geodesic triangle lying inside a normal ball with centre x. The interiors of finitely many of the triangles will cover the surface; since edges of different triangles either coincide or intersect transversally, this finite set of triangles can be used iteratively to construct a triangulation. Another simple procedure for triangulating differentiable manifolds was given by Hassler Whitney in 1957, based on his embedding theorem. In fact, if X is a closed n-submanifold of Rm, subdivide a cubical lattice in Rm into simplices to give a triangulation of Rm. By taking the mesh of the lattice small enough and slightly moving finitely many of the vertices, the triangulation will be in general position with respect to X: thus no simplices of dimension < s = m − n intersect X and each s-simplex intersecting X
These points of intersection and their barycentres generate an n-dimensional simplicial subcomplex in Rm, lying wholly inside the tubular neighbourhood. The triangulation is given by the projection of this simplicial complex onto X.
Graphs on surfaces
A Whitney triangulation or clean triangulation of a surface is an embedding of a graph onto the surface in such a way that the faces of the embedding are exactly the cliques of the graph. Equivalently, every face is a triangle, every triangle is a face, and the graph is not itself a clique. The clique complex of the graph is then homeomorphic to the surface. The 1-skeletons of Whitney triangulations are exactly the locally cyclic graphs other than K4.
