This is a survey of known algorithms in algebraic topology with a focus on finite simplicial complexes and, in particular, simplicial manifolds. Wherever possible an elementary approach is chosen. This way the text may also serve as a condensed but very basic introduction to the algebraic topology of simplicial manifolds.
This text will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming book "Triangulated Manifolds with Few Vertices" by Frank H. Lutz.
In this note, working in the context of simplicial sets, we give a detailed study of the complexity for computing chain level Steenrod squares, in terms of the number of face operators required. This analysis is based on the combinatorial formulation given in [R. Gonzalez-Diaz, P. Real. A Combinatorial Method for Computing Steenrod Squares. J. of Pure and Applied Algebra, 139 (1999) 89-108]. As an application, we give here an algorithm for computing cup-$i$ products over integers on a simplicial complex at chain level.
We show that when a simplicial Lie group acts on a simplicial manifold $\{X_*\}$, we can construct a bisimplicial manifold and the de Rham complex on it. This complex is quasi-isomorphic to the equivariant simplicial de Rham complex on $\{X_*\}$ and its cohomology group is isomorphic to the cohomology group of the fat realization of the bisimplicial manifold. We also exhibit a cocycle in the equivariant simplicial de Rham complex.
Any manifold with boundary gives rise to a Poincare duality algebra in a natural way. Given a simplicial poset $S$ whose geometric realization is a closed orientable homology manifold, and a characteristic function, we construct a manifold with boundary such that graded components of its Poincare duality algebra have dimensions $h_k"(S)$. This gives a clear topological evidence for two well-known facts about simplicial manifolds: the nonnegativity of $h"$-numbers (Novik--Swartz theorem) and the symmetry $h"_k=h"_{n-k}$ (generalized Dehn--Sommerville relations).
We define secondary theories and characteristic classes for simplicial smooth manifolds generalizing Karoubi's multiplicative K-theory and multiplicative cohomology groups for smooth manifolds. As a special case we get versions of the groups of differential characters of Cheeger and Simons for simplicial smooth manifolds. Special examples include classifying spaces of Lie groups and Lie groupoids.
Integral foliated simplicial volume is a version of simplicial volume combining the rigidity of integral coefficients with the flexibility of measure spaces. In this article, using the language of measure equivalence of groups we prove a proportionality principle for integral foliated simplicial volume for aspherical manifolds and give refined upper bounds of integral foliated simplicial volume in terms of stable integral simplicial volume. This allows us to compute the integral foliated simplicial volume of hyperbolic 3-manifolds. This is complemented by the calculation of the integral foliat…
Let $ρ:(D^2)^m\to I^m$ be the orbit map for the diagonal action of the torus $T^m$ on the unit poly-disk $(D^2)^m$, $I^m=[0,1]^m$ is the unit cube. Let $C$ be a cubical subcomplex in $I^m$. The moment-angle complex $\ma(C)$ is a $T^m$-invariant bigraded cellular decomposition of the subset $ρ^{-1}(C)\subset(D^2)^m$ with cells corresponding to the faces of $C$. Different combinatorial problems concerning cubical complexes and related combinatorial objects can be treated by studying the equivariant topology of corresponding moment-angle complexes. Here we consider moment-angle complexes defined …
We establish a functor $Kan$ from local Kan simplicial manifolds to weak Kan simplicial manifolds. It gives a solution to the problem of extending local Lie groupoids to Lie 2-groupoids.
We consider the relation between simplicial volume and two of its variants: the stable integral simplicial volume and the integral foliated simplicial volume. The definition of the latter depends on a choice of a measure preserving action of the fundamental group on a probability space. We show that integral foliated simplicial volume is monotone with respect to weak containment of measure preserving actions and yields upper bounds on (integral) homology growth. Using ergodic theory we prove that simplicial volume, integral foliated simplicial volume and stable integral simplicial volume coinc…
Let $M$ be the interior of a connected, oriented, compact manifold $V$ of dimension at least 2. If each path component of $\partial V$ has amenable fundamental group, then we prove that the simplicial volume of $M$ is equal to the relative simplicial volume of $V$ and also to the geometric (Lipschitz) simplicial volume of any Riemannian metric on $M$ whenever the latter is finite. As an application we establish the proportionality principle for the simplicial volume of complete, pinched negatively curved manifolds of finite volume.
In this paper, we study the well-know $g$-conjecture for rational homology spheres in a topological way. To do this, we construct a class of topological spaces with torus actions, which can be viewed as topological generalizations of toric varieties. Along this way we prove that after doing stellar subdivision operations at some middle dimensional faces of an arbitrary rational homology sphere, the $g$-conjecture is valid. Furthermore, we give topological proofs of several fundamental algebraic results about Buchsbaum complexes and simplicial manifolds. In this process, we also get a few inter…
We compute the value of the simplicial volume for closed, oriented Riemannian manifolds covered by $\mathbb{H}^{2}\times\mathbb{H}^{2}$ explicitly, thus in particular for products of closed hyperbolic surfaces. This gives the first exact value of a nonvanishing simplicial volume for a manifold of nonconstant curvature.
We define the ideal simplicial volume for compact manifolds with boundary. Roughly speaking, the ideal simplicial volume of a manifold $M$ measures the minimal size of possibly ideal triangulations of $M$ "with real coefficients", thus providing a variation of the ordinary simplicial volume defined by Gromov in 1982, the main difference being that ideal simplices are now allowed to appear in representatives of the fundamental class. We show that the ideal simplicial volume is bounded above by the ordinary simplicial volume, and that it vanishes if and only if the ordinary simplicial volume doe…
Moment-angle manifolds corresponding to three-dimensional simplicial spheres, chordality and connected sums of products of spheres
Moscow State University（莫斯科国立大学）；National Research University Higher School of Economics（国立高等经济大学）；Steklov Mathematical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences（俄罗斯科学院斯捷克洛夫数学研究所）
We show that the simplicial volume of a contractible 3-manifold not homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^3$ is infinite. As a consequence, the Euclidean space may be characterized as the unique contractible $3$-manifold with vanishing minimal volume, or as the unique contractible $3$-manifold supporting a complete finite-volume Riemannian metric with Ricci curvature uniformly bounded from below. On the contrary, we show that in every dimension $n\geq 4$ there exists a contractible $n$-manifold with vanishing simplicial volume not homeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}^n$. We also compute the spectrum of the simpl…
We provide sharp lower bounds for the simplicial volume of compact $3$-manifolds in terms of the simplicial volume of their boundaries. As an application, we compute the simplicial volume of several classes of $3$-manifolds, including handlebodies and products of surfaces with the interval. Our results provide the first exact computation of the simplicial volume of a compact manifold whose boundary has positive simplicial volume. We also compute the minimal number of tetrahedra in a (loose) triangulation of the product of a surface with the interval.
We study a metric version of the simplicial volume on Riemannian manifolds, the Lipschitz simplicial volume, with applications to degree theorems in mind. We establish a proportionality principle and a product inequality from which we derive an extension of Gromov's volume comparison theorem to products of negatively curved manifolds or locally symmetric spaces of non-compact type. In contrast, we provide vanishing results for the ordinary simplicial volume; for instance, we show that the ordinary simplicial volume of non-compact locally symmetric spaces with finite volume of Q-rank at least 3…
We develop a generalization of manifold calculus in the sense of Goodwillie-Weiss where the manifold is replaced by a simplicial complex. We consider functors from the category of open subsets of a fixed simplical complex into the category of topological spaces and prove an analogue of the approximation theorem. Namely, under certain conditions such a functor can be approximated by a tower of (appropriately adapted) polynomial functors.
We show that closed manifolds supporting a nonpositively curved metric with negative $([\frac{n}{4}]+1)$-Ricci curvature, have positive simplicial volume. This answers a special case of a conjecture of Gromov.
Simplicial homology manifolds are proposed as an interesting class of geometric objects, more general than topological manifolds but still quite tractable, in which questions about the microstructure of space-time can be naturally formulated. Their string orientations are classified by $H^3$ with coefficients in an extension of the usual group of D-brane charges, by cobordism classes of homology three-spheres with trivial Rokhlin invariant.
A well-known question by Gromov asks whether the vanishing of the simplicial volume of oriented closed connected aspherical manifolds implies the vanishing of the Euler characteristic. We study various versions of Gromov's question and collect strategies towards affirmative answers and strategies towards negative answers to this problem. Moreover, we put Gromov's question into context with other open problems in low- and high-dimensional topology. A special emphasis is put on a comparative analysis of the additivity properties of the simplicial volume and the Euler characteristic for manifolds…
We study the question when a manifold that fibers over a sphere can be rationally essential, or even have positive simplicial volume. More concretely, we show that mapping tori of manifolds (whose fundamental groups can be quite arbitrary) of odd dimension at least 7 with non-zero simplicial volume are very common. This contrasts the case of fiber bundles over a sphere of dimension d > 1: we prove that their total spaces are rationally inessential if d is at least 3, and always have simplicial volume 0. Using a result by Dranishnikov, we also deduce a surprising property of macroscopic dimensi…
The simplicial volume is a homotopy invariant of oriented closed connected manifolds measuring the efficiency of representing the fundamental class by singular chains with real coefficients. Despite of its topological nature, the simplicial volume is linked to Riemannian geometry in various ways, e.g., by the proportionality principle. The proportionality principle of simplicial volume states that the simplicial volume and the Riemannian volume are proportional for oriented closed connected Riemannian manifolds sharing the same universal Riemannian covering. Thurston indicated a proof of the p…
For several important classes of manifolds acted on by the torus, the information about the action can be encoded combinatorially by a regular n-valent graph with vector labels on its edges, which we refer to as the torus graph. By analogy with the GKM-graphs, we introduce the notion of equivariant cohomology of a torus graph, and show that it is isomorphic to the face ring of the associated simplicial poset. This extends a series of previous results on the equivariant cohomology of torus manifolds. As a primary combinatorial application, we show that a simplicial poset is Cohen-Macaulay if it…
Let $M$ be a smooth manifold and $K\subset M$ be a simplicial complex of codimension at least 3. Functor calculus methods lead to a homotopical formula of $M\setminus K$ in terms of spaces $M\setminus T$ where $T$ is a finite subset of $K$. This is a generalization of the author's previous work with Michael Weiss where the subset $K$ is assumed to be a smooth submanifold of $M$ and uses his generalization of manifold calculus adapted for simplicial complexes.
We consider high dimensional variants of the maximum flow and minimum cut problems in the setting of simplicial complexes and provide both algorithmic and hardness results. By viewing flows and cuts topologically in terms of the simplicial (co)boundary operator we can state these problems as linear programs and show that they are dual to one another. Unlike graphs, complexes with integral capacity constraints may have fractional max-flows. We show that computing a maximum integral flow is NP-hard. Moreover, we give a combinatorial definition of a simplicial cut that seems more natural in the c…
We extend the notion of simplicial set with effective homology to diagrams of simplicial sets. Further, for a given finite diagram of simplicial sets $X \colon \mathcal{I} \to \mathsf{sSet}$ such that each simplicial set $X(i)$ has effective homology, we present an algorithm computing the homotopy colimit $\mathsf{hocolim} X$ as a simplicial set with effective homology. We also give an algorithm computing the cofibrant replacement $X^\mathsf{cof}$ of $X$ as a diagram with effective homology. This is applied to computing of equivariant cohomology operations.
We deal with the problem of obtaining explicit simplicial formulae defining the classical Adem cohomology operations at the cochain level. Having these formulae at hand, we design an algorithm for computing these operations for any finite simplicial set.
We prove that any mapping torus of a closed 3-manifold has zero simplicial volume. When the fiber is a prime 3-manifold, classification results can be applied to show vanishing of the simplicial volume, however the case of reducible fibers is by far more subtle. We thus analyse the possible self-homeomorphisms of reducible 3-manifolds, and use this analysis to produce an explicit representative of the fundamental class of the corresponding mapping tori. To this end, we introduce a new technique for understanding self-homeomorphisms of connected sums in arbitrary dimensions on the level of clas…
The fundamental Davis-Januszkiewicz construction of toric manifolds is reinterpreted in order to allow for generalization. Applications involve the simplicial wedge $J$-construction and Ayzenberg's recent identities arising from composed simplicial complexes.
We discuss some additivity properties of the simplicial volume for manifolds with boundary: we give proofs of additivity for glueing amenable boundary components and of superadditivity for glueing amenable submanifolds of the boundary, and we discuss doubling of 3-manifolds.
In this work we discuss the construction of "simplicial BF theory", the field theory with finite-dimensional space of fields, associated to a triangulated manifold, that is in a sense equivalent to topological BF theory on the manifold (with infinite-dimensional space of fields). This is done in framework of simplicial program - program of constructing discrete topological field theories. We also discuss the relation of these constructions to homotopy algebra.
We present here a combinatorial method for computing cup-$i$ products and Steenrod squares of a simplicial set $X$. This method is essentially based on the determination of explicit formulae for the component morphisms of a higher diagonal approximation (i.e., a family of morphisms measuring the lack of commutativity of the cup product on the cochain level) in terms of face operators of $X$. A generalization of this method to Steenrod reduced powers is sketched. This description can be considered as a translation of the most ancient definition of Steenrod squares to the general setting of the …
Algorithms for persistent homology and zigzag persistent homology are well-studied for persistence modules where homomorphisms are induced by inclusion maps. In this paper, we propose a practical algorithm for computing persistence under $\mathbb{Z}_2$ coefficients for a sequence of general simplicial maps and show how these maps arise naturally in some applications of topological data analysis. First, we observe that it is not hard to simulate simplicial maps by inclusion maps but not necessarily in a monotone direction. This, combined with the known algorithms for zigzag persistence, provide…
For a torsion-free virtually polycyclic group $Γ$, we give a canonical homomorphism form certain finite-dimensional cochain complex to the $\Q$-polynomial de Rham complex of the simplicial classifying space $BΓ$ which induces a cohomology isomorphism. By this result, we obtain the Sullivan's minimal model of certain differential graded algebra defined on $BΓ$ and we obtain new examples of hard Lefschetz symplectic manifolds and hard Lefschetz contact manifolds.
We prove that certain conditions on multigraded Betti numbers of a simplicial complex $K$ imply existence of a higher Massey product in cohomology of a moment-angle-complex $\mathcal Z_K$, which contains a unique element (a strictly defined product). Using the simplicial multiwedge construction, we find a family $\mathcal{F}$ of polyhedral products being smooth closed manifolds such that for any $l,r\geq 2$ there exists an $l$-connected manifold $M\in\mathcal F$ with a nontrivial strictly defined $r$-fold Massey product in $H^{*}(M)$. As an application to homological algebra, we determine a wi…
The Image-Computing Spectral Sequence computes the homology of the image of a finite map from the alternating homology of the multiple point spaces of the map. A related spectral sequence was obtained by Gabrielov, Vorobjob and Zell which computes the homology of the image of a closed map from the homology of $k$-fold fibred products of the map. We give new proofs of these results, in case the map can be triangulated. Thanks to work of Hardt, this holds for a very wide range of maps, and in particular for most of the finite maps of interest in singularity theory. The proof seems conceptually s…
A complex manifold $X$ satisfies the Oka-Grauert property if the inclusion $\Cal O(S,X) \hookrightarrow \Cal C(S,X)$ is a weak equivalence for every Stein manifold $S$, where the spaces of holomorphic and continuous maps from $S$ to $X$ are given the compact-open topology. Gromov's Oka principle states that if $X$ has a spray, then it has the Oka-Grauert property. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the Oka-Grauert property using homotopical algebra. We embed the category of complex manifolds into the model category of simplicial sheaves on the site of Stein manifolds. Our main result …
We present new definitions for and give a comprehensive treatment of the canonical compactification of configuration spaces due to Fulton-MacPherson and Axelrod-Singer in the setting of smooth manifolds, as well as a simplicial variant of this compactification initiated by Kontsevich. Our constructions are elementary and give simple global coordinates for the compactified configuration space of a general manifold embedded in Euclidean space. We stratify the canonical compactification, identifying the diffeomorphism types of the strata in terms of spaces of configurations in the tangent bundle,…
The simplicial volume is a homotopy invariant of manifolds introduced by Gromov in 1982. In order to study its main properties, Gromov himself initiated the dual theory of bounded cohomology, that developed into an active and independent research field. Gromov's theory of bounded cohomology was based on the use of multicomplexes, which are simplicial structures that generalize simplicial complexes without allowing all the degeneracies appearing in simplicial sets. In the first part of this paper we lay the foundation of the theory of multicomplexes. We construct the singular multicomplex K(X) …
We embed the category of complex manifolds into the simplicial category of prestacks on the simplicial site of Stein manifolds, a prestack being a contravariant simplicial functor from the site to the category of simplicial sets. The category of prestacks carries model structures, one of them defined for the first time here, which allow us to develop "holomorphic homotopy theory". More specifically, we use homotopical algebra to study lifting and extension properties of holomorphic maps, such as those given by the Oka Principle. We prove that holomorphic maps satisfy certain versions of the Ok…
As a higher dimensional version of the theory of Morse functions, there have been various studies of smooth manifolds using generic smooth maps. As fundamental results, in these studies, they have found that inverse images of such maps often restrict the types of the source manifolds. For example, if a generic map such that the inverse image of a regular value is not null-cobordant, then the homology group of its {\it Reeb} space, which is defined as the space of all the connected components of inverse images of the map and a fundamental tool in the theory of generic smooth maps, is known to b…
A central problem of algebraic topology is to understand the homotopy groups $π_d(X)$ of a topological space $X$. For the computational version of the problem, it is well known that there is no algorithm to decide whether the fundamental group $π_1(X)$ of a given finite simplicial complex $X$ is trivial. On the other hand, there are several algorithms that, given a finite simplicial complex $X$ that is simply connected (i.e., with $π_1(X)$ trivial), compute the higher homotopy group $π_d(X)$ for any given $d\geq 2$. %The first such algorithm was given by Brown, and more recently, Čadek et al. …
The moment-angle complex Z_K is cell complex with a torus action constructed from a finite simplicial complex K. When this construction is applied to a triangulated sphere K or, in particular, to the boundary of a simplicial polytope, the result is a manifold. Moment-angle manifolds and complexes are central objects in toric topology, and currently are gaining much interest in homotopy theory, complex and symplectic geometry. The geometric aspects of the theory of moment-angle complexes are the main theme of this survey. We review constructions of non-Kahler complex-analytic structures on mome…
For G a Lie group acting on a symplectic manifold $(M,ω)$ preserving a pair of Lagrangians $L_0$, $L_1$, under certain hypotheses not including equivariant transversality we construct a G-equivariant Floer cohomology of $L_0$ and $L_1$.
Given a sample $Y$ from an unknown manifold $X$ embedded in Euclidean space, it is possible to recover the homology groups of $X$ by building a Vietoris--Rips or Čech simplicial complex on top of the vertex set $Y$. However, these simplicial complexes need not inherit the metric structure of the manifold, in particular when $Y$ is infinite. Indeed, a simplicial complex is not even metrizable if it is not locally finite. We instead consider metric thickenings, called the \emph{Vietoris--Rips} and \emph{Čech thickenings}, which are equipped with the 1-Wasserstein metric in place of the simplicia…
