Stellar subdivisions and Stanley-Reisner rings of Gorenstein complexes

Unprojection theory aims to analyze and construct complicated commutative rings in terms of simpler ones. Our main result is that, on the algebraic level of Stanley-Reisner rings, stellar subdivisions of non-acyclic Gorenstein simplicial complexes correspond to unprojections of type Kustin-Miller. As an application, we inductively calculate the minimal graded free resolutions of Stanley-Reisner rings associated to stacked polytopes, recovering results of Terai, Hibi, Herzog and Li Marzi.