The main result of this paper is a proof of the following conjecture of Babson & Kozlov:
Theorem. Let G be a graph of maximal valency d, then the complex Hom(G,K_n) is at least (n-d-2)-connected.
Here Hom(-,-) denotes the polyhedral complex introduced by Lovász to study the topological lower bounds for chromatic numbers of graphs.
We will also prove, as a corollary to the main theorem, that the complex Hom(C_{2r+1},K_n) is (n-4)-connected, for $n\geq 3$.
We show that coloring properties of a simplicial complex K are reflected by splitting properties of a bundle over the associated Davis-Januszkiewicz space whose Chern classes are given by the elementary symmetric polynomials in the generators of the Stanley-Reisner algebra of K.
The Hom-complexes were introduced by Lovasz to study topological obstructions to graph colorings. It was conjectured by Babson and Kozlov, and proved by Cukic and Kozlov, that Hom(G,K_n) is (n-d-2)-connected, where d is the maximal degree of a vertex of G. We give a short proof of the conjecture.
We define an (r,s)-coloring of an abstract simplicial complex to be a coloring using r colors of the vertices so that in any simplex at most s vertices have the same color. We translate the problem of finding an (r,s)-coloring of a given simplex to a topological problem and to a ring theoretic problem. The topological version involves vector bundles over Davis--Januszkiewicz spaces and the algebraic one involves factorizations in Stanley-Reisner rings.
In this note we provide a higher-dimensional analogue of Tutte's celebrated theorem on colorings and flows of graphs, by showing that the theory of arithmetic Tutte polynomials and quasi-polynomials encompasses invariants defined for CW complexes by Beck-Breuer-Godkin-Martin and Duval-Klivans-Martin. Furthermore, we answer a question by Bajo-Burdick-Chmutov, concerning the modified Tutte-Krushkal-Renhardy polynomials defined by these authors: to this end, we prove that the product of two arithmetic multiplicity functions on a matroid is again an arithmetic multiplicity function.
A vertex coloring of a simplicial complex $Δ$ is called a linear coloring if it satisfies the property that for every pair of facets $(F_1, F_2)$ of $Δ$, there exists no pair of vertices $(v_1, v_2)$ with the same color such that $v_1\in F_1\backslash F_2$ and $v_2\in F_2\backslash F_1$. We show that every simplicial complex $Δ$ which is linearly colored with $k$ colors includes a subcomplex $Δ'$ with $k$ vertices such that $Δ'$ is a strong deformation retract of $Δ$. We also prove that this deformation is a nonevasive reduction, in particular, a collapsing.
We compute the cohomology groups of the spaces of colorings of cycles, i.e., of the prodsimplicial complexes Hom(C_m,K_n). We perform the computation first with Z_2, and then with integer coefficients. The main technical tool is to use spectral sequences in conjunction with a detailed combinatorial analysis of a family of cubical complexes, which we call torus front complexes. As an application of our method, we demonstrate how to collapse each connected component of Hom(C_m,C_n) onto a garland of cubes.
Steingrimsson's coloring complex and Jonsson's unipolar complex are interpreted in terms of hyperplane arrangements. This viewpoint leads to short proofs that all coloring complexes and a large class of unipolar complexes have convex ear decompositions. These convex ear decompositions impose strong new restrictions on the chromatic polynomials of all finite graphs. Similar results are obtained for characteristic polynomials of submatroids of type B_n arrangements.
The aim of this paper is to generalize the notion of the coloring complex of a graph to hypergraphs. We present three different interpretations of those complexes -- a purely combinatorial one and two geometric ones. It is shown, that most of the properties, which are known to be true for coloring complexes of graphs, break down in this more general setting, e.g., Cohen-Macaulayness and partitionabilty. Nevertheless, we are able to provide bounds for the $f$- and $h$-vectors of those complexes which yield new bounds on chromatic polynomials of hypergraphs. Moreover, it is shown that the colori…
Given a 3-colorable graph $X$, the 3-coloring complex $B(X)$ is the graph whose vertices are all the independent sets which occur as color classes in some 3-coloring of $X$. Two color classes $C,D \in V(B(X))$ are joined by an edge if $C$ and $D$ appear together in a 3-coloring of $X$. The graph $B(X)$ is 3-colorable. Graphs for which $B(B(X))$ is isomorphic to $X$ are termed reflexive graphs. In this paper, we consider 3-edge-colorings of cubic graphs for which we allow half-edges. Then we consider the 3-coloring complexes of their line graphs. The main result of the paper is a surprising out…
A foundation is laid for a theory of combinatorial groupoids, allowing us to use concepts like ``holonomy'', ``parallel transport'', ``bundles'', ``combinatorial curvature'' etc. in the context of simplicial (polyhedral) complexes, posets, graphs, polytopes and other combinatorial objects. A new, holonomy-type invariant for cubical complexes is introduced, leading to a combinatorial ``Theorema Egregium'' for cubical complexes non-embeddable into cubical lattices. Parallel transport of Hom-complexes and maps is used as a tool for extending Babson-Kozlov-Lovasz graph coloring results to more gen…
Let $G$ be a simple graph with $n$ vertices. The coloring complex $Δ(G)$ was defined by Steingr\'ımsson, and the homology of $Δ(G)$ was shown to be nonzero only in dimension $n-3$ by Jonsson. Hanlon recently showed that the Eulerian idempotents provide a decomposition of the homology group $H_{n-3}(Δ(G))$ where the dimension of the $j^{th}$ component in the decomposition, $H_{n-3}^{(j)}(Δ(G))$, equals the absolute value of the coefficient of $λ^{j}$ in the chromatic polynomial of $G$, $χ_{G}(λ)$. Jonsson recently studied the topology of intersections of coloring complexes. In this note, we sho…
Phil Hanlon proved that the coefficients of the chromatic polynomial of a graph G are equal (up to sign) to the dimensions of the summands in a Hodge-type decomposition of the top homology of the coloring complex for G. We prove a type B analogue of this result for chromatic polynomials of signed graphs using hyperoctahedral Eulerian idempotents.
We generalize the notion of a coloring complex of a graph to linearized combinatorial Hopf monoids. We determine when a linearized combinatorial Hopf monoid has such a construction, and discover some inequalities that are satisfied by the quasisymmetric function invariants associated to the combinatorial Hopf monoid. We show that the collection of all such coloring complexes forms a linearized combinatorial Hopf monoid, which is the terminal object in the category of combinatorial Hopf monoids with convex characters. We also study several examples of combinatorial Hopf monoids.
In this article, we consider the bipartite graphs $K_2 \times K_n$. We prove that the connectedness of the complex $\displaystyle \text{Hom}(K_2\times K_{n}, K_m) $ is $m-n-1$ if $m \geq n$ and $m-3$ in the other cases. Therefore, we show that for this class of graphs, $\text{Hom} (G, K_m)$ is exactly $m-d-2$ connected, $m \geq n$, where $d$ is the maximal degree of the graph $G$.
In attempting to understand how combinatorial modifications alter algebraic properties of monomial ideals, several authors have investigated the process of adding "whiskers" to graphs. In this paper, we study a similar construction to build a simplicial complex $Δ_χ$ from a coloring $χ$ of a subset of the vertices of $Δ$, and give necessary and sufficient conditions for this construction to produce vertex decomposable simplicial complexes. We apply this work to strengthen and give new proofs about sequentially Cohen-Macaulay edge ideals of graphs.
For any two graphs $G$ and $H$ Lovász has defined a cell complex $Hom(G,H)$ having in mind the general program that the algebraic invariants of these complexes should provide obstructions to graph colorings. Here we announce the proof of a conjecture of Lovász concerning these complexes with $G$ a cycle of odd length. More specifically, we show that: if $Hom(C_{2r+1},G)$ is $k$-connected, then $χ(G)\geq k+4$. Our actual statement is somewhat sharper, as we find obstructions already in the non-vanishing of powers of certain Stiefel-Whitney classes.
For each strongly connected finite-dimensional (pure) simplicial complex we construct a finite group, the group of projectivities of the complex, which is a combinatorial but not a topological invariant. This group is studied for combinatorial manifolds and, in particular, for polytopal simplicial spheres. The results are applied to a coloring problem for simplicial (or, dually, simple) polytopes which arises in the area of toric algebraic varieties.
We study quasipolynomials enumerating proper colorings, nowhere-zero tensions, and nowhere-zero flows in an arbitrary CW-complex $X$, generalizing the chromatic, tension and flow polynomials of a graph. Our colorings, tensions and flows may be either modular (with values in $\mathbb{Z}/k\mathbb{Z}$ for some $k$) or integral (with values in $\{-k+1,\dots,k-1\}$). We obtain deletion-contraction recurrences and closed formulas for the chromatic, tension and flow quasipolynomials, assuming certain unimodularity conditions. We use geometric methods, specifically Ehrhart theory and inside-out polyto…
A simplicial complex is $r$-conic if every subcomplex of at most $r$ vertices is contained in the star of a vertex. A $4$-conic complex is simply connected. We prove that an $8$-conic complex is $2$-connected. In general a $(2n+1)$-conic complex need not be $n$-connected but a $6^n$-conic complex is $n$-connected. This extends results by Even-Zohar, Farber and Mead on ample complexes and answers two questions raised in their paper. Our results together with theirs imply that the probability of a complex being $n$-connected tends to $1$ as the number of vertices tends to $\infty$. Our model her…
For each finite simple graph $G$, Aharoni, Berger and Ziv consider a recursively defined number $ψ(G) \in \mathbb{Z}\cup \{+ \infty \}$ which gives a lower bound for the topological connectivity of the independence complex $I_G$. They conjecture that this bound is optimal for every graph. We use a result of recursion theory to give a short disproof of this claim.
We show that the natural Glauber dynamics mixes rapidly and generates a random proper edge-coloring of a graph with maximum degree $Δ$ whenever the number of colors is at least $q\geq (\frac{10}{3} + ε)Δ$, where $ε>0$ is arbitrary and the maximum degree satisfies $Δ\geq C$ for a constant $C = C(ε)$ depending only on $ε$. For edge-colorings, this improves upon prior work \cite{Vig99, CDMPP19} which show rapid mixing when $q\geq (\frac{11}{3}-ε_0 ) Δ$, where $ε_0 \approx 10^{-5}$ is a small fixed constant. At the heart of our proof, we establish a matrix trickle-down theorem, generalizing Oppenh…
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…
The paper studies the connectivity properties of facet graphs of simplicial complexes of combinatorial interest. In particular, it is shown that the facet graphs of $d$-cycles, $d$-hypertrees and $d$-hypercuts are, respectively, $(d+1)$, $d$, and $(n-d-1)$-vertex-connected. It is also shown that the facet graph of a $d$-cycle cannot be split into more than $s$ connected components by removing at most $s$ vertices. In addition, the paper discusses various related issues, as well as an extension to cell-complexes.
We describe a simple homological test for obstructions to graph colorings. The main idea is to combine the framework of Hom-complexes with the following general fact: an arbitrary Z_2-space has nontrivial homology with Z_2-coefficients in the dimension equal to its Stiefel-Whitney height. Actually, as a result we have a whole family of homology tests, one for each test graph. In general, these tests will give different answers, depending heavily on the choice of the test graph. We illustrate this phenomenon with some examples.
A vertex coloring of a strong digraph $D$ is a \emph{strong vertex-monochromatic connection coloring (SVMC-coloring)} if for every pair $u, v$ of vertices in $D$ there exists an $(u,v)$-path having all its internal vertices of the same color. Let $smc_v(D)$ denote the maximum number of colors used in an SVMC-coloring of a digraph $D$. In this paper we determine the value of $smc_v(D)$, whenever $D$ is the line digraph of a digraph. Also, if $T$ is a tournament, we give conditions to find the exact value of $smc_v(T)$.
This paper verifies a conjecture of Edelman and Reiner regarding the homology of the $h$-complex of a Boolean algebra. A discrete Morse function with no low-dimensional critical cells is constructed, implying a lower bound on connectivity. This together with an Alexander duality result of Edelman and Reiner implies homology-vanishing also in high dimensions. Finally, possible generalizations to certain classes of supersolvable lattices are suggested.
The concept of monochromatic connectivity was introduced by Caro and Yuster. A path in an edge-colored graph is called a \emph{monochromatic path} if all the edges on the path are colored the same. An edge-coloring of $G$ is a \emph{monochromatic connection coloring} ($MC$-coloring, for short) if there is a monochromatic path joining any two vertices in $G$. The \emph{monochromatic connection number}, denoted by $mc(G)$, is defined to be the maximum number of colors used in an $MC$-coloring of a graph $G$. In this paper, we study the monochromatic connection number on the lexicographical, stro…
A path in an edge-colored graph is called a \emph{monochromatic path} if all the edges on the path are colored the same. An edge-coloring of $G$ is a \emph{monochromatic connection coloring} (MC-coloring, for short) if there is a monochromatic path joining any two vertices in $G$. The \emph{monochromatic connection number}, denoted by $mc(G)$, is defined to be the maximum number of colors used in an MC-coloring of a graph $G$. These concepts were introduced by Caro and Yuster, and they got some nice results. In this paper, we will study two kinds of Erdős-Gallai-type problems for $mc(G)$, and …
Let $Ω_q=Ω_q(H)$ denote the set of proper $[q]$-colorings of the hypergraph $H$. Let $Γ_q$ be the graph with vertex set $Ω_q$ and an edge ${σ,τ\}$ where $σ,τ$ are colorings iff $h(σ,τ)=1$. Here $h(σ,τ)$ is the Hamming distance $|\{v\in V(H):σ(v)\neqτ(v)\}|$. We show that if $H=H_{n,m;k},\,k\geq 2$, the random $k$-uniform hypergraph with $V=[n]$ and $m=dn/k$ then w.h.p. $Γ_q$ is connected if $d$ is sufficiently large and $q\gtrsim (d/\log d)^{1/(k-1)}$.
Let Δbe a finite building (or, more generally, a thick spherical and locally finite building). The chamber graph G(Δ), whose edges are the pairs of adjacent chambers in Δ, is known to be q-regular for a certain number q=q(Δ). Our main result is that G(Δ) is q-connected in the sense of graph theory. Similar results are proved for the chamber graphs of Coxeter complexes and for order complexes of geometric lattices.
A path in a vertex-colored graph is called a \emph{vertex-monochromatic path} if its internal vertices have the same color. A vertex-coloring of a graph is a \emph{monochromatic vertex-connection coloring} (\emph{MVC-coloring} for short), if there is a vertex-monochromatic path joining any two vertices in the graph. For a connected graph $G$, the \emph{monochromatic vertex-connection number}, denoted by $mvc(G)$, is defined to be the maximum number of colors used in an \emph{MVC-coloring} of $G$. These concepts of vertex-version are natural generalizations of the colorful monochromatic connect…
We find families of graphs $G$ and subgraphs $H$ of $G$ such that the number of edge colorings of $G$ avoiding a monochromatic coloring of $H$ is determined by lattice point counts or a Hodge structure on the cohomology of a certain toric variety. In general, this gives a class of ``anti-Ramsey theory problems'' with a geometric structure. For example, we find one for Ramsey numbers of classes of such graphs. The key observation is that our previous result expressing simplicial chromatic polynomials in terms of $h$-vectors of auxiliary simplicial complexes can be reinterpreted as one on edge c…
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…
The multiplicity conjecture of Herzog, Huneke, and Srinivasan is verified for the face rings of the following classes of simplicial complexes: matroid complexes, complexes of dimension one and two, and Gorenstein complexes of dimension at most four. The lower bound part of this conjecture is also established for the face rings of all doubly Cohen-Macaulay complexes whose 1-skeleton's connectivity does not exceed the codimension plus one as well as for all (d-1)-dimensional d-Cohen-Macaulay complexes. The main ingredient of the proofs is a new interpretation of the minimal shifts in the resolut…
Let $r$ be a positive integer. An $r$-set is a pair $X= (V(X),R(X))$ consisting of a set $V(X)$ with a subset $R(X)$ of the direct product $V(X)^r$. The object of this paper is to investigate the Hom complexes of $r$-sets, which were introduced for graphs in the context of the graph coloring problem. In the first part, we introduce simplicial sets which we call singular complexes, and show that singular complexes and Hom complexes are naturally homotopy equivalent. The second part is devoted to the generalization of $\times$-homotopy theory established by Dochtermann. We show the folding theor…
Let Delta_{n-1} denote the (n-1)-dimensional simplex. Let Y be a random k-dimensional subcomplex of Delta_{n-1} obtained by starting with the full (k-1)-dimensional skeleton of Delta_{n-1} and then adding each k-simplex independently with probability p. Let H_{k-1}(Y;R) denote the (k-1)-dimensional reduced homology group of Y with coefficients in a finite abelian group R. Let R and k \geq 1 be fixed. It is shown that p=(k \log n)/n is a sharp threshold for the vanishing of H_{k-1}(Y;R).
The paper surveys recent progress in understanding geometric, topological and combinatorial properties of large simplicial complexes, focusing mainly on ampleness, connectivity and universality. In the first part of the paper we concentrate on $r$-ample simplicial complexes which are high dimensional analogues of the $r$-e.c. graphs introduced originally by Erd\H os and Réniy. The class of $r$-ample complexes is useful for applications since these complexes allow extensions of subcomplexes of certain type in all possible ways; besides, $r$-ample complexes exhibit remarkable robustness properti…
We provide a detailed study of topological and combinatorial properties of sectionable tournaments. This class forms an inductively constructed family of tournaments grounded over simply disconnected tournaments, those tournaments whose fundamental groups of acyclic complexes are non-trivial. When $T$ is a sectionable tournament, we fully describe the cell-structure of its acyclic complex $Acy(T)$ by using the adapted machinery of discrete Morse theory for acyclic complexes of tournaments. In the combinatorial side, we demonstrate that the dimension of the complex $Acy(T)$ has a role to play. …
We give a simple short proof of Brooks' theorem using only induction and greedy coloring, while avoiding issues of graph connectivity. The argument generalizes easily to some extensions of Brooks' theorem, including its variants for list coloring, signed graphs coloring and correspondence coloring.
An edge-coloring of a connected graph $G$ is called a {\it monochromatic connection coloring} (MC-coloring, for short), introduced by Caro and Yuster, if there is a monochromatic path joining any two vertices of the graph $G$. Let $mc(G)$ denote the maximum number of colors used in an MC-coloring of a graph $G$. Note that an MC-coloring does not exist if $G$ is not connected, and in this case we simply let $mc(G)=0$. We use $G(n,p)$ to denote the Erdös-Rényi random graph model, in which each of the $\binom{n}{2}$ pairs of vertices appears as an edge with probability $p$ independently from othe…
We introduce a model structure on the category of graphs, which is Quillen equivalent to the category of $\mathbb{Z}_2$-spaces. A weak equivalence is a graph homomorphism which induces a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-homotopy equivalence between their box complexes. The box complex is a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-space associated to a graph, considered in the context of the graph coloring problem. In the proof, we discuss the universality problem of the Hom complex.
Following D.B. Karaguezian, V. Reiner, and M.L. Wachs (Matching Complexes, Bounded Degree Graph Complexes, and Weight Spaces of $GL$-Complexes, Journal of Algebra 2001) we study the connectivity degree and shellability of multiple chessboard complexes. Our central new results (Theorems 3.2 and 4.4) provide sharp connectivity bounds relevant to applications in Tverberg type problems where multiple points of the same color are permitted. These results also provide a foundation for the new results of Tverberg-van Kampen-Flores type, as announced in arXiv:1502.05290 [math.CO].
In this paper we study a pair of numerical parameters associated to a graph $G$. One the one hand, one can construct $\text{Hom}(K_2, G)$, a space of homomorphisms from a edge $K_2$ into $G$ and study its (topological) connectivity. This approach dates back to the neighborhood complexes introduced by Lovász in his proof of the Kneser conjecture. In another direction Brightwell and Winkler introduced a graph parameter called the warmth $ζ(G)$ of a graph $G$, based on asymptotic behavior of $d$-branching walks in $G$ and inspired by constructions in statistical physics. Both the warmth of $G$ an…
The dominance complex $D(G)$ of a simple graph $G = (V,E)$ is the simplicial complex consisting of the subsets of $V$ whose complements are dominating. We show that the connectivity of $D(G)$ plus $2$ is a lower bound for the vertex cover number $τ(G)$ of $G$.
We introduce the notion of \textit{star cluster} of a simplex in a simplicial complex. This concept provides a general tool to study the topology of independence complexes of graphs. We use star clusters to answer a question arisen from works of Engström and Jonsson on the homotopy type of independence complexes of triangle-free graphs and to investigate a large number of examples which appear in the literature. We present an alternative way to study the chromatic number of a graph from a homotopical point of view and obtain new results regarding the connectivity of independence complexes.
Given a simplicial hyperplane arrangement H and a subspace arrangement A embedded in H, we define a simplicial complex Delta_{A,H} as the subdivision of the link of A induced by H. In particular, this generalizes Steingrimsson's coloring complex of a graph. We do the following: (1) When A is a hyperplane arrangement, Delta_{A,H} is shown to be shellable. As a special case, we answer affirmatively a question of Steingrimsson on coloring complexes. (2) For H being a Coxeter arrangement of type A or B we obtain a close connection between the Hilbert series of the Stanley-Reisner ring of Delta_{A,…
We study the class of independence complexes of claw-free graphs. The main theorem give good bounds on the connectivity of these complexes, given bounds for a few subcomplexes of the same class. Two applications are presented. Firstly, we show that the independence complex of a claw-free graph with n vertices and maximal degree d is (cn/d+epsilon)-connected, where c=2/3. This can be compared with the result of Szabo and Tardos that c=1/2 is optimal with no restrictions on the graphs. Secondly, we calculate the connectivity of a family of complexes used in Babson and Kozlov's proof of Lovasz co…
A well-known result of Tutte says that if Gamma is an Abelian group and G is a graph having a nowhere-zero Gamma-flow, then G has a nowhere-zero Gamma'-flow for each Abelian group Gamma' whose order is at least the order of Gamma. Jaeger, Linial, Payan, and Tarsi observed that this does not extend to their more general concept of group connectivity. Motivated by this we define g(k) as the least number such that, if G is Gamma-connected for some Abelian group Gamma of order k, then G is also Gamma'-connected for every Abelian group Gamma' of order |Gamma'| > g(k). We prove that g(k) exists and …
For a hypergraph $G$, let $χ(G), Δ(G),$ and $λ(G)$ denote the chromatic number, the maximum degree, and the maximum local edge connectivity of $G$, respectively. A result of Rhys Price Jones from 1975 says that every connected hypergraph $G$ satisfies $χ(G) \leq Δ(G) + 1$ and equality holds if and only if $G$ is a complete graph, an odd cycle, or $G$ has just one (hyper-)edge. By a result of Bjarne Toft from 1970 it follows that every hypergraph $G$ satisfies $χ(G) \leq λ(G) + 1$. In this paper, we show that a hypergraph $G$ with $λ(G) \geq 3$ satisfies $χ(G) = λ(G) + 1$ if and only if $G$ con…
The topological Tverberg theorem has been generalized in several directions by setting extra restrictions on the Tverberg partitions. Restricted Tverberg partitions, defined by the idea that certain points cannot be in the same part, are encoded with graphs. When two points are adjacent in the graph, they are not in the same part. If the restrictions are too harsh, then the topological Tverberg theorem fails. The colored Tverberg theorem corresponds to graphs constructed as disjoint unions of small complete graphs. Hell studied the case of paths and cycles. In graph theory these partitions are…
Let $Φ$ be a finite root system of rank $n$ and let $m$ be a nonnegative integer. The generalized cluster complex $Δ^m (Φ)$ was introduced by S. Fomin and N. Reading. It was conjectured by these authors that $Δ^m (Φ)$ is shellable and by V. Reiner that it is $(m+1)$-Cohen-Macaulay, in the sense of Baclawski. These statements are proved in this paper. Analogous statements are shown to hold for the positive part $Δ^m_+ (Φ)$ of $Δ^m (Φ)$. An explicit homotopy equivalence is given between $Δ^m_+ (Φ)$ and the poset of generalized noncrossing partitions, associated to the pair $(Φ, m)$ by D. Armstro…
The fundamental group of the $2$-dimensional Linial-Meshulam random simplicial complex $Y_2(n,p)$ was first studied by Babson, Hoffman and Kahle. They proved that the threshold probability for simple connectivity of $Y_2(n,p)$ is about $p\approx n^{-1/2}$. In this paper, we show that this threshold probability is at most $p\le (γn)^{-1/2}$, where $γ= 4^4/3^3$, and conjecture that this threshold is sharp. In fact, we show that $p=(γn)^{-1/2}$ is a sharp threshold probability for the stronger property that every cycle of length $3$ is the boundary of a subcomplex of $Y_2(n,p)$ that is homeomorph…
In this paper we study the homology of a random Cech complex generated by a homogeneous Poisson process in a compact Riemannian manifold M. In particular, we focus on the phase transition for "homological connectivity" where the homology of the complex becomes isomorphic to that of M. The results presented in this paper are an important generalization of [7], from the flat torus to general compact Riemannian manifolds. In addition to proving the statements related to homological connectivity, the methods we develop in this paper can be used as a framework for translating results for random geo…
The Hom complex ${\rm Hom}(T,G)$ of graphs is a CW-complex associated to a pair of graphs $T$ and $G$, considered in the graph coloring problem. It is known that certain homotopy invariants of ${\rm Hom}(T,G)$ give lower bounds for the chromatic number of $G$. For a fixed finite graph $T$, we show that there is no homotopy invariant of ${\rm Hom}(T,G)$ which gives an upper bound for the chromatic number of $G$. More precisely, for a non-bipartite graph $G$, we construct a graph $H$ such that ${\rm Hom}(T,G)$ and ${\rm Hom}(T,H)$ are homotopy equivalent but $χ(H)$ is much larger than $χ(G)$. Th…
