Let $A$ be a 0-1 matrix whose columns are maximal. We can associate its rows with vertices and columns with simplices in an abstract simplicial complex. Conversely, given an ASC, we can encode it in a 0-1 matrix.


What is the name of this matrix? Surely it must be used in the literature, but I can't seem to find an instance.



0-1 matrix corresponding to an abstract simplicial complex
That sounds to me very like the encoding of a relation between two sets. By old work of Dowker there are two ASCs that correspond to such and their realisations are homotopically equivalent. There is extensive use of this and variants in which not just 0 and 1 are used but values between 0 and 1. I do not know of any special name. It is related to Chu spaces in computer science and category theory.


One particular use is in a paper by Abels and Holz, in which starting from a group and a family of subgroups they build an ASC and can interpret the homotopy groups of this ASC in terms of syzygies of group presentations. (I give a summary of this in a chapter in my menagerie notes that can be accessed via the nLab. The paper is:
H. Abels and S. Holz, Higher generation by subgroups, J. Alg, 160, (1993), 311– 341.) 


I know of other applications in a variety of mathematical and non-mathematical areas, but will limit the list to having one entry! (Some of the non-mathematical ones are a bit suspect methodologically! 


Edit: Steve asked for the reference to Dowker's work, which I forgot to give, so here it is :


C. H. Dowker, Homology Groups of Relations, Annals of Maths, 56, (1952), 84 – 95.


