We exhibit an identity of abstract simplicial complexes between the well-studied complex of trees and the reduced minimal nested set complex of the partition lattice. We conclude that the order complex of the partition lattice can be obtained from the complex of trees by a sequence of stellar subdivisions. We provide an explicit cohomology basis for the complex of trees that emerges naturally from this context.
Motivated by these results, we review the generalization of complexes of trees to complexes of $k$-trees by Hanlon, and we propose yet another, in the context of nested set complexes more natural, generalization.
Nested set complexes appear as the combinatorial core of De Concini-Procesi arrangement models. We show that nested set complexes are homotopy equivalent to the order complexes of the underlying meet-semilattices without their minimal elements. For atomic semilattices, we consider the realization of nested set complexes by simplicial fans as proposed in math.AG/0305142 by the first author and S. Yuzvinsky. We show that in this case the nested set complexes in fact are homeomorphic to the mentioned order complexes.
This note which can be viewed as a complement to Alex Postnikov's paper math.CO/0507163, presents a self-contained overview of basic properties of nested complexes and their two dual polyhedral realizations: as complete simplicial fans, and as simple polytopes. Most of the results are not new; our aim is to bring into focus a striking similarity between nested complexes and associated fans and polytopes on one side, and cluster complexes and generalized associahedra introduced and studied in hep-th/0111053, math.CO/0202004, on the other side.
We generalize the concept of combinatorial nested set complexes to posets and exhibit the topological relationship between the arising nested set complexes and the order complex of the underlying poset. In particular, a sufficient condition is given so that this relationship is actually a subdivision. We use the results to generalize the proof method of Čukić and Delucchi, so far restricted to semilattices, for a result of Björner, Paffenholz, Sjöstrand and Ziegler on the Bier construction on posets.
Given a finite group G and a natural number n, we study the structure of the complex of nested sets of the associated Dowling lattice Q(G) and of its subposet of the G-symmetric partitions Q_G which was recently introduced by Hultman together with the complex of G-symmetric phylogenetic trees T_G. Hultman shows that T_G and Q_G are homotopy equivalent and Cohen-Macaulay, and determines the rank of their top homology. An application of the theory of building sets and nested set complexes by Feichtner and Kozlov shows that in fact T_G is subdivided by the order complex of Q_G. We introduce the c…
Consider the poset of partitions of {1,...(n-1)k+1} with block sizes congruent to 1 modulo k. We prove that its order complex is a subdivision of the complex of k-trees, thereby answering a question posed by Feichtner. The result is obtained by an ad-hoc generalization of concepts from the theory of nested set complexes to non-lattices.
The solutions to certain nested recursions, such as Conolly's C(n) = C(n-C(n-1))+C(n-1-C(n-2)), with initial conditions C(1)=1, C(2)=2, have a well-established combinatorial interpretation in terms of counting leaves in an infinite binary tree. This tree-based interpretation, which has a natural generalization to a k-term nested recursion of this type, only applies to homogeneous recursions, and only solves each recursion for one set of initial conditions determined by the tree. In this paper, we extend the tree-based interpretation to solve a non-homogeneous version of the k-term recursion th…
In their work on `Coxeter-like complexes', Babson and Reiner introduced a simplicial complex $Δ_T$ associated to each tree $T$ on $n$ nodes, generalizing chessboard complexes and type A Coxeter complexes. They conjectured that $Δ_T$ is $(n-b-1)$-connected when the tree has $b$ leaves. We provide a shelling for the $(n-b)$-skeleton of $Δ_T$, thereby proving this conjecture. In the process, we introduce notions of weak order and inversion functions on the labellings of a tree $T$ which imply shellability of $Δ_T$, and we construct such inversion functions for a large enough class of trees to ded…
We prove a Matrix-Tree Theorem enumerating the spanning trees of a cell complex in terms of the eigenvalues of its cellular Laplacian operators, generalizing a previous result for simplicial complexes. As an application, we obtain explicit formulas for spanning tree enumerators and Laplacian eigenvalues of cubes; the latter are integers. We prove a weighted version of the eigenvalue formula, providing evidence for a conjecture on weighted enumeration of cubical spanning trees. We introduce a cubical analogue of shiftedness, and obtain a recursive formula for the Laplacian eigenvalues of shifte…
We present a version of the weighted cellular matrix-tree theorem that is suitable for calculating explicit generating functions for spanning trees of highly structured families of simplicial and cell complexes. We apply the result to give weighted generalizations of the tree enumeration formulas of Adin for complete colorful complexes, and of Duval, Klivans and Martin for skeleta of hypercubes. We investigate the latter further via a logarithmic generating function for weighted tree enumeration, and derive another tree-counting formula using the unsigned Euler characteristics of skeleta of a …
The question of shellability of complexes of directed trees was asked by R. Stanley. D. Kozlov showed that the existence of a complete source in a directed graph provides a shelling of its complex of directed trees. We will show that this property gives a shelling that is straightforward in some sense. Among the simplicial polytopes, only the crosspolytopes allow such a shelling. Furthermore, we show that the complex of directed trees of a complete double directed graph is a union of suitable spheres. We also investigate shellability of the maximal pure skeleton of a complex of directed trees.…
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 generalize some homotopy calculation techniques such as splittings and matching trees that are introduced for the computations in the case of the independence complexes of graphs to arbitrary simplicial complexes, and exemplify their efficiency on some simplicial complexes, the devoid complexes of graphs, which are simplicial complexes parametrized by graphs. Additionally, we compute the homotopy type of dominance complexes of chordal graphs.
We give new interpretations of the $ν$-Tamari lattice of Préville-Ratelle and Viennot. First, we describe it as a rotation lattice of $ν$-trees, which uncovers the relation with known combinatorial objects such as tree-like tableaux and north-east fillings. Then, using a formulation in terms of bracket vectors of $ν$-trees and componentwise order, we provide a simple description of the lattice property. We also show that the $ν$-Tamari lattice is isomorphic to the increasing-flip poset of a suitably chosen subword complex, and settle a special case of Rubey's lattice conjecture concerning the …
Bergman complexes are polyhedral complexes associated to matroids. Faces of these complexes are certain matroids, called matroid types, too. In order to understand the structure of these faces we decompose matroid types into direct summands. Ardila/Klivans proved that the Bergman Complex of a matroid can be subdivided into the order complex of the proper part of its lattice of flats. Beyond that Feichtner/Sturmfels showed that the Bergman complex can even be subdivided to the even coarser nested set complex. We will give a much shorter and more general proof of this fact. Generalizing formulas…
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 family of polytopes introduced by E.M. Feichtner, A. Postnikov and B. Sturmfels, which were named nestohedra, consists in each dimension of an interval of polytopes starting with a simplex and ending with a permutohedron. This paper investigates a problem of changing and extending the boundaries of these intervals. An iterative application of Feichtner-Kozlov procedure of forming complexes of nested sets is a solution of this problem. By using a simple algebraic presentation of members of nested sets it is possible to avoid the problem of increasing the complexity of the structure of nested …
We define the generalized Golomb triangular recursion by g_{j,s,lambda}(n) = g_{j,s,lambda}(n - s - g_{j,s,lambda}(n-j)) + λj. For particular choices of the initial conditions, we show that the solution of the recursion is a non-slow monotone sequence for which we can provide a combinatorial interpretation in terms of a weighted count of the leaves of a certain labeled infinite tree. We discover that more than one such tree interpretation is possible, leading to different choices of the initial conditions and alternative solutions that are closely related. In the case lambda=1 the initial cond…
The celebrated dependent random choice lemma states that in a bipartite graph an average vertex (weighted by its degree) has the property that almost all small subsets $S$ in its neighborhood has common neighborhood almost as large as in the random graph of the same edge-density. Two well-known applications of the lemma are as follows. The first is a theorem of Füredi and of Alon, Krivelevich, and Sudakov showing that the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex graph not containing a fixed bipartite graph with maximum degree at most $r$ on one side is $O(n^{2-1/r})$. This was recently extende…
The theory of complexes of directed trees was initiated by Kozlov to answer a question by Stanley, and later on, results from the theory were used by Babson and Kozlov in their proof of the Lovasz conjecture. We develop the theory and prove that complexes on directed acyclic graphs are shellable. A related concept is that of independence complexes: construct a simplicial complex on the vertex set of a graph, by including each independent set of vertices as a simplex. Two theorems used for breaking and gluing such complexes are proved and applied to generalize results by Kozlov. A fruitful rest…
We apply a tree-based methodology to solve new, very broadly defined families of nested recursions of the general form R(n)=sum_{i=1}^k R(n-a_i-sum_{j=1}^p R(n-b_{ij})), where a_i are integers, b_{ij} are natural numbers, and k,p are natural numbers that we use to denote "arity" and "order," respectively, and with some specified initial conditions. The key idea of the tree-based solution method is to associate such recursions with infinite labelled trees in a natural way so that the solution to the recursions solves a counting question relating to the corresponding trees. We characterize certa…
Tropical varieties play an important role in algebraic geometry. The Bergman complex B(M) and the positive Bergman complex B+(M) of an oriented matroid M generalize to matroids the notions of the tropical variety and positive tropical variety associated to a linear ideal. Our main result is that if A is a Coxeter arrangement of type Phi with corresponding oriented matroid M_Phi, then B+(M_Phi) is dual to the graph associahedron of type Phi, and B(M_Phi) equals the nested set complex of A. In addition, we prove that for any orientable matroid M, one can find |mu(M)| different reorientations of …
We calculate determinants of weighted sums of reflections and of (nested) commutators of reflections. The results obtained generalize the Kirchhoff's matrix-tree theorem and the matrix-3-hypertree theorem by G.\,Massbaum and A.\,Vaintrob.
We show that the independence complex of a chordal graph is contractible if and only if this complex is dismantlable (strong collapsible) and it is homotopy equivalent to a sphere if and only if its core is a cross-polytopal sphere. The proof uses the properties of tree models of chordal graphs.
In this article, we discuss the vertex decomposability of three well-studied simplicial complexes associated to forests. In particular, we show that the bounded degree complex of a forest and the complex of directed trees of a multidiforest are vertex decomposable. We then prove that the non-cover complex of a forest is either contractible or homotopy equivalent to a sphere. Finally, we provide a complete characterization of forests whose non-cover complexes are vertex decomposable.
A spanning tree $T$ in a graph $G$ is a sub-graph of $G$ with the same vertex set as $G$ which is a tree. In 1981, McKay proved an asymptotic result regarding the number of spanning trees in random $k$-regular graphs. In this paper we prove a high-dimensional generalization of McKay's result for random $d$-dimensional, $k$-regular simplicial complexes on $n$ vertices, showing that the weighted number of simplicial spanning trees is of order $(ξ_{d,k}+o(1))^{\binom{n}{d}}$ as $n\to\infty$, where $ξ_{d,k}$ is an explicit constant, provided $k> 4d^2+d+2$. A key ingredient in our proof is the loca…
Strong placement games (SP-games) are a class of combinatorial games whose structure allows one to describe the game via simplicial complexes. A natural question is whether well-known invariants of combinatorial games, such as "game value", appear as invariants of the simplicial complexes. This paper is the first step in that direction. We show that every simplicial complex encodes a certain type of SP-game (called an "invariant SP-game") whose ruleset is independent of the board it is played on. We also show that in the class of SP-games isomorphic simplicial complexes correspond to isomorphi…
The tropical variety defined by linear equations with constant coefficients is the Bergman fan of the corresponding matroid. Building on a self-contained introduction to matroid polytopes, we present a geometric construction of the Bergman fan, and we discuss its relationship with the simplicial complex of nested sets in the lattice of flats. The Bergman complex is triangulated by the nested set complex, and the two complexes coincide if and only if every connected flat remains connected after contracting along any subflat. This sharpens a result of Ardila-Klivans who showed that the Bergman c…
We study an abstract notion of tree structure which lies at the common core of various tree-like discrete structures commonly used in combinatorics: trees in graphs, order trees, nested subsets of a set, tree-decompositions of graphs and matroids etc. Unlike graph-theoretical or order trees, these _tree sets_ can provide a suitable formalization of tree structure also for infinite graphs, matroids, and set partitions. Order trees reappear as oriented tree sets. We show how each of the above structures defines a tree set, and which additional information, if any, is needed to reconstruct it fro…
We generalize the definition and enumeration of spanning trees from the setting of graphs to that of arbitrary-dimensional simplicial complexes $Δ$, extending an idea due to G. Kalai. We prove a simplicial version of the Matrix-Tree Theorem that counts simplicial spanning trees, weighted by the squares of the orders of their top-dimensional integral homology groups, in terms of the Laplacian matrix of $Δ$. As in the graphic case, one can obtain a more finely weighted generating function for simplicial spanning trees by assigning an indeterminate to each vertex of $Δ$ and replacing the entries …
Labeled infinite trees provide combinatorial interpretations for many integer sequences generated by nested recurrence relations. Typically, such sequences are monotone increasing. Several of these sequences also have straightforward descriptions in terms of how often each value in the sequence occurs. In this paper, we generalize the most classical examples to a larger family of sequences parametrized by linear recurrence relations. Each of our sequences can be constructed in three different ways: via a nested recurrence relation, from labeled infinite trees, or by using Zeckendorf-like strin…
This paper starts with an observation that two infinite series of simplicial complexes, which a priori do not seem to have anything to do with each other, have the same homotopy type. One series consists of the complexes of directed forests on a double directed string, while the other one consists of Shapiro-Welker models for the spaces of hyperbolic polynomials with a triple root. We explain this coincidence in the more general context by finding an explicit homotopy equivalence between complexes of directed forests on a double directed tree, and doubly disconnecting complexes of a tree.
An associahedron is a polytope whose vertices correspond to the triangulations of a convex polygon and whose edges correspond to flips between them. A particularly elegant realization of the associahedron, due to S. Shnider and S. Sternberg and popularized by J.-L. Loday, has been generalized in two directions: on the one hand by A. Postnikov to obtain a realization of the graph associahedra of M. Carr and S. Devadoss, and on the other hand by C. Hohlweg and C. Lange to obtain multiple realizations of the associahedron parametrized by a sequence of signs. The goal of this paper is to unify and…
In 1983 Kalai proved an incredible generalisation of Cayley's formula for the number of trees on a labelled vertex set to a formula for a class of $r$-dimensional simplicial complexes. These simplicial complexes generalise trees by means of being homologically $\Bbb Q$-acyclic. In this text we consider a different generalisation of trees to the class of pure dimensional simplicial complexes that \textit{minimally connect a vertex set} (in the sense that the removal of any top dimensional face disconnects the complex). Our main result provides an upper and lower bound for the number of these mi…
We generalize the theory of critical groups from graphs to simplicial complexes. Specifically, given a simplicial complex, we define a family of abelian groups in terms of combinatorial Laplacian operators, generalizing the construction of the critical group of a graph. We show how to realize these critical groups explicitly as cokernels of reduced Laplacians, and prove that they are finite, with orders given by weighted enumerators of simplicial spanning trees. We describe how the critical groups of a complex represent flow along its faces, and sketch another potential interpretation as analo…
Recently V. Krushkal and D. Renardy generalized the Tutte polynomial from graphs to cell complexes. We show that evaluating this polynomial at the origin gives the number of cellular spanning trees in the sense of A. Duval, C. Klivans, and J. Martin. Moreover, after a slight modification, the Tutte-Krushkal-Renardy polynomial evaluated at the origin gives a weighted count of cellular spanning trees, and therefore its free term can be calculated by the cellular matrix-tree theorem of Duval et al. In the case of cell decompositions of a sphere, this modified polynomial satisfies the same duality…
We study the question of realisability of iterated higher Whitehead products with a given form of nested brackets by simplicial complexes, using the notion of the moment-angle complex $Z_K$. Namely, we say that a simplicial complex $K$ realises an iterated higher Whitehead product $w$ if $w$ is a nontrivial element of $π_*(Z_K)$. The combinatorial approach to the question of realisability uses the operation of substitution of simplicial complexes: for any iterated higher Whitehead product $w$ we describe a simplicial complex $\partialΔ_w$ that realises $w$. Furthermore, for a particular form o…
A $2$-matching complex is a simplicial complex which captures the relationship between $2$-matchings of a graph. In this paper, we will use discrete Morse Theory and the Matching Tree Algorithm to prove homotopical results. We will consider a class of graphs for which the homotopy type of the $2$-matching complex transforms from a sphere to a point with the addition of leaves. We end the paper by defining $k$-matching sequences and looking at the $1$- and $2$-matching complexes of wheel graphs and perfect caterpillar graphs.
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.
