The homotopy type of the polyhedral product for shifted complexes

We prove a conjecture of Bahri, Bendersky, Cohen and Gitler: if K is a shifted simplicial complex on n vertices, X1,…,Xn are pointed connected CW-complexes and CXi is the cone on  Xi, then the polyhedral product determined by K and the pairs (CXi,Xi) is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of suspensions of smashes of the Xi's. Earlier work of the authors dealt with the special case where each Xi is a loop space. New techniques are introduced to prove the general case. These have the advantage of simplifying the earlier results and of being sufficiently general to show that the conjecture holds for a substantially larger class of simplicial complexes. We discuss connections between polyhedral products and toric topology, combinatorics, and classical homotopy theory.