Equilibrium and equivariant triangulations of some small covers with minimum number of vertices

Abstract: Small covers were introduced by Davis and Januszkiewicz in 1991. We introduce the notion of equilibrium triangulations for small covers. We study equilibrium and vertex minimal $\mathbb{Z}_2^2$-equivariant triangulations of $2$-dimensional small covers. We discuss vertex minimal equilibrium triangulations of $\mathbb{RP}^3 # \mathbb{RP}^3$, $S^1 \times \mathbb{RP}^2$ and a nontrivial $S^1$ bundle over $\mathbb{RP}^2$. We construct some nice equilibrium triangulations of the real projective space $\mathbb{RP}^n$ with $2^n +n+1$ vertices. The main tool is the theory of small covers.