A well-known theorem of Whitney states that a 3-connected planar graph admits an essentially unique embedding into the 2-sphere. We prove a 3-dimensional analogue: a simply-connected $2$-complex every link graph of which is 3-connected admits an essentially unique locally flat embedding into the 3-sphere, if it admits one at all. This can be thought of as a generalisation of the 3-dimensional Schoenflies theorem.
We prove that 2-dimensional simplicial complexes whose first homology group is trivial have topological embeddings in 3-space if and only if there are embeddings of their link graphs in the plane that are compatible at the edges and they are simply connected.
We characterise the embeddability of simply connected locally 3-connected 2-dimensional simplicial complexes in 3-space in a way analogous to Kuratowski's characterisation of graph planarity, by excluded minors. This answers questions of Lovász, Pardon and Wagner.
We study $d$-dimensional simplicial complexes that are PL embeddable in $\mathbb{R}^{d+1}$. It is shown that such a complex must satisfy a certain homological condition. The existence of this obstruction allows us to provide a systematic approach to deriving upper bounds for the number of top-dimensional faces of such complexes, particularly in low dimensions.
We introduce dual matroids of 2-dimensional simplicial complexes. Under certain necessary conditions, duals matroids are used to characterise embeddability in 3-space in a way analogous to Whitney's planarity criterion. We further use dual matroids to extend a 3-dimensional analogue of Kuratowski's theorem to the class of 2-dimensional simplicial complexes obtained from simply connected ones by identifying vertices or edges.
This paper is the last paper in a series of five papers. Building on earlier papers in this series, we prove an analogue of Kuratowski's characterisation of graph planarity for three dimensions. More precisely, a simply connected 2-dimensional simplicial complex embeds in 3-space if and only if it has no obstruction from an explicit list of obstructions. This list of obstructions is finite except for one infinite family.
We give examples of finite, simplicial $2$-complexes that do not PL embed in $\mathbb{R}^4$ and exhibit, for each such complex, a family of PL immersions into $\mathbb{R}^4$ that hide the obstruction to embedding in "higher and higher order Milnor invariants". In addition, we show that the embedding obstructions defined by Krushkal in [8] vanish for our examples. We also answer a question in a paper of Avramidi-Okun-Schreve.
We consider an embedding of a $2$-dimensional CW complex into the $3$-sphere, and construct it's dual graph. Then we obtain a homogeneous system of linear equations from the $2$-dimensional CW complex in the first homology group of the complement of the dual graph. By checking that the homogeneous system of linear equations does not have an integral solution, we show that some $2$-dimensional CW complexes cannot be embedded into the 3-sphere.
We characterise the following property by six obstructions: given a graphic matroid $M$ and a set $X$ of its elements, when is $M$ the cycle matroid of a graph $G$ such that $X$ is a connected edge set in $G$?
A map $f: K \to \mathbb{R}^d$ of a simplicial complex is an almost embedding if $f(σ) \cap f(τ) = \varnothing$ whenever $σ, τ$ are disjoint simplices of $K$. Fix integers $d,k \geqslant 2$ such that $k+2 \leqslant d \leqslant\frac{3k}2+1$. Assuming that the "preimage of a cycle is a cycle" we prove $\mathbf{NP}$-hardness of the algorithmic problem of recognition of almost embeddability of finite $k$-dimensional complexes in $\mathbb{R}^d$. Assuming that $\mathbf{P} \ne \mathbf{NP}$ (and that the "preimage of a cycle is a cycle") we prove that the embedding obstruction is incomplete for $k$-dim…
(1) We show that if a presentation of the trivial group is "hard to trivialize", in the sense that lots of Tietze moves are necessary to transform it into the trivial presentation, then the associated presentation complex (which is a contractible 2-dimensional cell complex) is "hard to embed in $\mathbb{R}^3$", in the sense that lots of linear subdivisions are necessary. (2) For any d, we show that all collapsible d-complexes with n facets linearly embed in $\mathbb{R}^{2d}$ after less than n barycentric subdivisions. This is best possible, as cones over non-planar graphs do not topologically …
We consider 2-dimensional random simplicial complexes $Y$ in the multi-parameter model. We establish the multi-parameter threshold for the property that every 2-dimensional simplicial complex $S$ admits a topological embedding into $Y$ asymptotically almost surely. Namely, if in the procedure of the multi-parameter model, each $i$-dimensional simplex is taken independently with probability $p_i=p_i(n)$, from a set of $n$ vertices, then the threshold is $p_0 p_1^3 p_2^2 = \frac{1}{n}$. This threshold happens to coincide with the previously established thresholds for uniform hyperbolicity and tr…
We offer the following explanation of the statement of the Kuratowski graph planarity criterion and of 6/7 of the statement of the Robertson-Seymour-Thomas intrinsic linking criterion. Let us call a cell complex 'dichotomial' if to every cell there corresponds a unique cell with the complementary set of vertices. Then every dichotomial cell complex is PL homeomorphic to a sphere; there exist precisely two 3-dimensional dichotomial cell complexes, and their 1-skeleta are K_5 and K_{3,3}; and precisely six 4-dimensional ones, and their 1-skeleta all but one graphs of the Petersen family. In high…
We introduce the class of outerspatial 2-complexes as the natural generalisation of the class of outerplanar graphs to three dimensions. Answering a question of O-joung Kwon, we prove that a locally 2-connected 2-complex is outerspatial if and only if it does not contain a surface of positive genus as a subcomplex and does not have a space minor that is a generalised cone over $K_4$ or $K_{2,3}$. This is applied to nested plane embeddings of graphs; that is, plane embeddings constrained by conditions placed on a set of cycles of the graph.
Simple rectilinear polygons (i.e. rectilinear polygons without holes or cutpoints) can be regarded as finite rectangular cell complexes coordinatized by two finite dendrons. The intrinsic $l_1$-metric is thus inherited from the product of the two finite dendrons via an isometric embedding. The rectangular cell complexes that share this same embedding property are called ramified rectilinear polygons. The links of vertices in these cell complexes may be arbitrary bipartite graphs, in contrast to simple rectilinear polygons where the links of points are either 4-cycles or paths of length at most…
Given a space X we study the topology of the space of embeddings of X into $\mathbb{R}^d$ through the combinatorics of triangulations of X. We give a simple combinatorial formula for upper bounds for the largest dimension of a sphere that antipodally maps into the space of embeddings. This result summarizes and extends results about the nonembeddability of complexes into $\mathbb{R}^d$, the nonexistence of nonsingular bilinear maps, and the study of embeddings into $\mathbb{R}^d$ up to isotopy, such as the chirality of spatial graphs.
We show that the decision problem of determining whether a given (abstract simplicial) $k$-complex has a geometric embedding in $\mathbb R^d$ is complete for the Existential Theory of the Reals for all $d\geq 3$ and $k\in\{d-1,d\}$. This implies that the problem is polynomial time equivalent to determining whether a polynomial equation system has a real solution. Moreover, this implies NP-hardness and constitutes the first hardness results for the algorithmic problem of geometric embedding (abstract simplicial) complexes.
In this paper we show that graphs of "neighbourly" cubical complexes -- cubical complexes in which every pair of vertices spans a (unique) cube -- have good expansion properties, using a technique based on multicommodity flows. By showing that graphs of stable set polytopes are graphs of neighbourly cubical complexes we give a new proof that graphs of stable set polytopes have edge expansion 1.
A fundamental question for simplicial complexes is to find the lowest dimensional Euclidean space in which they can be embedded. We investigate this question for order complexes of posets. We show that order complexes of thick geometric lattices as well as several classes of finite buildings, all of which are order complexes, are hard to embed. That means that such d-dimensional complexes require (2d + 1)-dimensional Euclidean space for an embedding. (This dimension is in general always sufficient for any d-complex.) We develop a method to show non-embeddability for general order complexes of …
In this note we give a short and elementary proof of a more general version of Whitney's theorem that 3-connected planar graphs have a unique embedding in the plane. A consequence of the theorem is that cubic plane graphs cannot be embedded in a higher genus with a simple dual. The aim of this paper is to promote a simple and elementary proof, which is especially well suited for lectures presenting Whitney's theorem.
Globally non-positively curved, or CAT(0), polyhedral complexes arise in a number of applications, including evolutionary biology and robotics. These spaces have unique shortest paths and are composed of Euclidean polyhedra, yet many algorithms and properties of shortest paths and convex hulls in Euclidean space fail to transfer over. We give an algorithm, using linear programming, to compute the convex hull of a set of points in a 2-dimensional CAT(0) polyhedral complex with a single vertex. We explore the use of shortest path maps to answer single-source shortest path queries in 2-dimensiona…
We study the homology of random Čech complexes generated by a homogeneous Poisson process. We focus on 'homological connectivity' - the stage where the random complex is dense enough, so that its homology "stabilizes" and becomes isomorphic to that of the underlying topological space. Our results form a comprehensive high-dimensional analogue of well-known phenomena related to connectivity in the Erdős-Rényi graph and random geometric graphs. We first prove that there is a sharp phase transition describing homological connectivity. Next, we analyze the behavior of the complex in the critical w…
