In this article, we introduce the notion of a wedge of graphs and provide detailed computations for the independence complex of a wedge of path and cycle graphs. In particular, we show that these complexes are either contractible or wedges of spheres.
We determine the homotopy types of the independence complexes of the $(n \times 6)$-square grid graphs. In fact, we show that these complexes are homotopy equivalent to wedges of spheres.
The independence complex of a graph G is a simplicial complex whose simplices are the independent sets in G. In the last couple of decades, the independence complexes of square grids (with various boundary conditions) have gained much attention because of their connections with the hard square model from statistical physics. In this article, we prove that if G is an $m\times n$ grid with open or cylindrical boundary condition then its independence complex is homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres. A part of this result settles a conjecture of Iriye.
For $r\geq 1$, the $r$-independence complex of a graph $G$ is a simplicial complex whose faces are subset $I \subseteq V(G)$ such that each component of the induced subgraph $G[I]$ has at most $r$ vertices. In this article, we determine the homotopy type of $r$-independence complexes of certain families of graphs including complete $s$-partite graphs, fully whiskered graphs, cycle graphs and perfect $m$-ary trees. In each case, these complexes are either homotopic to a wedge of equi-dimensional spheres or are contractible. We also give a closed form formula for their homotopy types.
We consider a certain class of simplicial complexes which includes the independence complexes of forests. We show that if a simplicial complex $K$ belongs to this class, then the polyhedral join $\mathcal{Z}^*_{K}(\underline{X}, \emptyset)$ is homotopy equivalent to a wedge sum of CW complexes of the form $Σ^r X_{i_1} * X_{i_2} * \cdots * X_{i_k}$, where $\underline{X}$ is a family $\{X_i\}_{i \in V(K)}$ of CW complexes and $Σ$ denotes the unreduced suspension. This result is applied to study the homotopy type of the independence complex of the lexicographic product $G[H]$ of a graph $H$ over …
The independence complex $\mathrm{Ind}(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the simplicial complex formed by its independent sets. This article introduces a deformation of the simplicial boundary map of $\mathrm{Ind}(G)$ that gives rise to a double complex with trivial homology. Filtering this double complex in the right direction induces a spectral sequence that converges to zero and contains on its first page the homology of the independence complexes of $G$ and various subgraphs of $G$, obtained by removing independent sets and their neighborhoods from $G$. It is shown that this spectral sequence may be u…
Let $P$ be a finite poset with an element $s$ such that (1) for all $x\in P$, either $s\vee x$ or $s\wedge x$ exists; and (2) for all $x,y\in P$ such that $x<y$, if $s\wedge x$ does not exist but $s\wedge y$ does exist, then $(s\wedge y)\vee x$ exists. Kozlov, the winner of the 2005 European Prize in Combinatorics ("for deep combinatorial results obtained by algebraic topology and particularly for the solution of a conjecture of Lovász"), conjectured in the 1998 Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society that the order complex of $P$ is non-evasive. We prove this conjecture.
We describe the homotopy types of Vietoris-Rips complexes of hypercube graphs at small scale parameters. In more detail, let $Q_n$ be the vertex set of the hypercube graph with $2^n$ vertices, equipped with the shortest path metric. Equivalently, $Q_n$ is the set of all binary strings of length $n$, equipped with the Hamming distance. The Vietoris-Rips complex of $Q_n$ at scale parameter zero is $2^n$ points, and the Vietoris-Rips complex of $Q_n$ at scale parameter one is the hypercube graph, which is homotopy equivalent to a wedge sum of circles. We show that the Vietoris-Rips complex of $Q_…
The bounded degree complex $BD(G,λ)$ is a generalization of the matching complexes of a graph. In this paper, we show that the bounded degree complex of a forest is shellable, by using independence complexes of hypergraphs. We obtain a wedge decomposition result of bounded degree complexes when a graph $G$ has a leaf
Let (W,S) be a Coxeter system. We introduce the boolean complex of involutions of W which is an analogue of the boolean complex of W studied by Ragnarsson and Tenner. By applying discrete Morse theory, we determine the homotopy type of the boolean complex of involutions for a large class of (W,S), including all finite Coxeter groups, finding that the homotopy type is that of a wedge of spheres of dimension |S| - 1. In addition, we find simple recurrence formulas for the number of spheres in the wedge.
Faculty of Education, An Giang University Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City(安江大学越南国立大学胡志明市教育学院);Institute of Mathematics, VAST(越南科学技术院数学研究所)
We study the independence complex of the lexicographic product $G[H]$ of a forest $G$ and a graph $H$. We prove that for a forest $G$ which is not dominated by a single vertex, if the independence complex of $H$ is homotopy equivalent to a wedge sum of spheres, then so is the independence complex of $G[H]$. We offer two examples of explicit calculations. As the first example, we determine the homotopy type of the independence complex of $L_m [H]$, where $L_m$ is the tree on $m$ vertices with no branches, for any positive integer $m$ when the independence complex of $H$ is homotopy equivalent t…
Let $\mathbf{k}$ be the field $\mathbb{F}_p$ or the ring $\mathbb{Z}$. We study combinatorial and topological properties of the universal simplicial complexes $X(\mathbf{k}^n)$ and $K(\mathbf{k}^n)$ whose simplices are certain unimodular subsets of $\mathbf{k}^n$. As a main result we show that $X(\mathbf{k}^n)$, $K(\mathbf{k}^n)$ and the links of their simplicies are homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres specifying the exact number of spheres in the corresponding wedge decompositions. This is a generalisation of Davis and Januszkiewicz's result that $K(\mathbb{Z}^n)$ and $K(\mathbb{F}_2^n)…
A matching complex of a simple graph $G$ is a simplicial complex with faces given by the matchings of $G$. The topology of matching complexes is mysterious; there are few graphs for which the homotopy type is known. Marietti and Testa showed that matching complexes of forests are contractible or homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres. We study two specific families of trees. For caterpillar graphs, we give explicit formulas for the number of spheres in each dimension and for perfect binary trees we find a strict connectivity bound. We also use a tool from discrete Morse theory called the \t…
A multipath in a directed graph is a disjoint union of paths. The multipath complex of a directed graph ${\tt G}$ is the simplicial complex whose faces are the multipaths of ${\tt G}$. We compute the Euler characteristic, and associated generating function, of the multipath complex for some families of graphs, including transitive tournaments and complete bipartite graphs. Then, we compute the homotopy type of multipath complexes of linear graphs, polygons, small grids and transitive tournaments. We show that they are all contractible or wedges of spheres. We introduce a new technique for deco…