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.
Given a finite CAT(0) cubical complex, we define a flag simplicial complex associated to it, called the crossing complex. We show that the crossing complex holds much of the combinatorial information of the original cubical complex: for example, hyperplanes in the cubical complex correspond to vertex links in the crossing complex, and the crossing complex is balanced if and only if the cubical complex is cubically balanced. The most significant result is that the sets of $f$-vectors of CAT(0) cubical complexes and flag simplicial complexes are equal, up to an invertible linear transformation.
The $h$-polynomial of the barycentric subdivision of any $n$-dimensional cubical complex with nonnegative cubical $h$-vector is shown to have only real roots and to be interlaced by the Eulerian polynomial of type $B_n$. This result applies to barycentric subdivisions of shellable cubical complexes and, in particular, to barycentric subdivisions of cubical convex polytopes and answers affirmatively a question of Brenti, Mohammadi and Welker.
We provide a number of new construction techniques for cubical complexes and cubical polytopes, and thus for cubifications (hexahedral mesh generation). As an application we obtain an instance of a cubical 4-polytope that has a non-orientable dual manifold (a Klein bottle). This confirms an existence conjecture of Hetyei (1995). More systematically, we prove that every normal crossing codimension one immersion of a compact 2-manifold into R^3 PL-equivalent to a dual manifold immersion of a cubical 4-polytope. As an instance we obtain a cubical 4-polytope with a cubation of Boy's surface as a d…
We consider expansion and property testing in the language of incidence geometry, covering both simplicial and cubical complexes in any dimension. We develop a general method for passing from an explicit description of the cohomology group, which need not be trivial, to a testability proof with linear ratio between errors. The method is demonstrated by testing functions on 2-cells in cubical complexes to be induced from the edges.
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…
Ehrenborg noted that all tilings of a bipartite planar graph are encoded by its cubical matching complex and claimed that this complex is collapsible. We point out to an oversight in his proof and explain why these complexes can be the union of collapsible complexes. Also, we prove that all links in these complexes are suspensions up to homotopy. Furthermore, we extend the definition of a cubical matching complex to planar graphs that are not necessarily bipartite, and show that these complexes are either contractible or a disjoint union of contractible complexes. For a simple connected region…
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…
We consider closed simplicial and cubical $n$-complexes in terms of link of their $(n-2)$-faces. Especially, we consider the case, when this link has size 3 or 4, i.e., every $(n-2)$-face is contained in 3 or 4 $n$-faces. Such simplicial complexes with {\em short} (i.e. of length 3 or 4) links are completely classified by their {\em characteristic partition}. We consider also embedding into hypercubes of the skeletons of simplicial and cubical complexes.
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 …
Face numbers of triangulations of simplicial complexes were studied by Stanley by use of his concept of a local $h$-vector. It is shown that a parallel theory exists for cubical subdivisions of cubical complexes, in which the role of the $h$-vector of a simplicial complex is played by the (short or long) cubical $h$-vector of a cubical complex, defined by Adin, and the role of the local $h$-vector of a triangulation of a simplex is played by the (short or long) cubical local $h$-vector of a cubical subdivision of a cube. The cubical local $h$-vectors are defined in this paper and are shown to …
We describe an algorithm to compute the geodesics in an arbitrary CAT(0) cubical complex. A key tool is a correspondence between cubical complexes of global non-positive curvature and posets with inconsistent pairs. This correspondence also gives an explicit realization of such a complex as the state complex of a reconfigurable system, and a way to embed any interval in the integer lattice cubing of its dimension.
Sphere-bases are constructed for the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ vector space formed by the $k$-dimensional subcomplexes, of $n$-simplex (or $n$-cube), for which every $(k{-}1)$-face is contained in a positive even number of $k$-cells; addition is symmetric difference of the corresponding sets of $k$-cells. The bases consist of the boundaries of an algorithmically-specified family of $k{+}1$-simplexes or $k{+}1$-cubes. Geometric properties of these bases are investigated.
The paper presents geometric models for the set WO of weak orders on a finite set. In particulary, WO is modeled as a set of vertices of a cubical subdivision of a permutahedron. This approach is an alternative to the usual representation of WO by means of weak order polytopes.
We study a natural model of random 2-dimensional cubical complex which is a subcomplex of an n-dimensional cube, and where every possible square $2$-face is included independently with probability p. Our main result is to exhibit a sharp threshold p=1/2 for homology vanishing as $n \to \infty$. This is a 2-dimensional analogue of the Burtin and Erdős-Spencer theorems characterizing the connectivity threshold for random cubical graphs. Our main result can also be seen as a cubical counterpart to the Linial--Meshulam theorem for random 2-dimensional simplicial complexes. However, the models exhi…
The notion of polytopal map between two polytopal complexes is defined. Surprisingly, this definition is quite simple and extends naturally those of simplicial and cubical maps. It is then possible to define an induced chain map between the associated chain complexes. Finally, we use this new tool to give the first combinatorial proof of the splitting necklace theorem of Alon. The paper ends with open questions, such as the existence of Sperner's lemma for a polytopal complex or the existence of a cubical approximation theorem.
Given a reconfigurable system X, such as a robot moving on a grid or a set of particles traversing a graph without colliding, the possible positions of X naturally form a cubical complex S(X). When S(X) is a CAT(0) space, we can explicitly construct the shortest path between any two points, for any of the four most natural metrics: distance, time, number of moves, and number of steps of simultaneous moves. CAT(0) cubical complexes are in correspondence with posets with inconsistent pairs (PIPs), so we can prove that a state complex S(X) is CAT(0) by identifying the corresponding PIP. We illust…
We study the topology of a random cubical complex associated to Bernoulli site percolation on a cubical grid. We begin by establishing a limit law for homotopy types. More precisely, looking within an expanding window, we define a sequence of normalized counting measures (counting connected components according to homotopy type), and we show that this sequence of random probability measures converges in probability to a deterministic probability measure. We then investigate the dependence of the limiting homotopy measure on the coloring probability $p$, and our results show a qualitative chang…
In geometric, algebraic, and topological combinatorics, the unimodality of combinatorial generating polynomials is frequently studied. Unimodality follows when the polynomial is (real) stable, a property often deduced via the theory of interlacing polynomials. Many of the open questions on stability and unimodality of polynomials pertain to the enumeration of faces of cell complexes. In this paper, we relate the theory of interlacing polynomials to the shellability of cell complexes. We first derive a sufficient condition for stability of the $h$-polynomial of a subdivision of a shellable comp…
Several recent papers have addressed the problem of characterizing the $f$-vectors of cubical polytopes. This is largely motivated by the complete characterization of the $f$-vectors of simplicial polytopes given by Stanley, Billera, and Lee in 1980. Along these lines Blind and Blind have shown that unlike in the simplicial case, there are parity restrictions on the $f$-vectors of cubical polytopes. In particular, except for polygons, all even dimensional cubical polytopes must have an even number of vertices. Here this result is extended to a class of zonotopal complexes which includes simply…
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 …
The article studies power complexes and generalized power complexes, and investigates the algebraic structure of their automorphism groups. The combinatorial incidence structures involved are cube-like, in the sense that they have many structural properties in common with higher-dimensional cubes and cubical tessellations on manifolds. Power complexes have repeatedly appeared in applications.
We use category-theoretic techniques to provide two proofs showing that for a higher-rank graph $Λ$, its cubical (co-)homology and categorical (co-)homology groups are isomorphic in all degrees, thus answering a question of Kumjian, Pask and Sims in the positive. Our first proof uses the topological realization of a higher-rank graph, which was introduced by Kaliszewski, Kumjian, Quigg, and Sims. In our more combinatorial second proof, we construct, explicitly and in both directions, maps on the level of (co-)chain complexes that implement said isomorphism. Along the way, we extend the definit…
We consider the problem of constructing a convex ear decomposition for a poset. The usual technique, first used by Nyman and Swartz, starts with a CL-labeling and uses this to shell the `ears' of the decomposition. We axiomatize the necessary conditions for this technique as a "CL-ced" or "EL-ced". We find an EL-ced of the d-divisible partition lattice, and a closely related convex ear decomposition of the coset lattice of a relatively complemented group. Along the way, we construct new EL-labelings of both lattices. The convex ear decompositions so constructed are formed by face lattices of h…
The class of quasi-median graphs is a generalisation of median graphs, or equivalently of CAT(0) cube complexes. The purpose of this thesis is to introduce these graphs in geometric group theory. In the first part of our work, we extend the definition of hyperplanes from CAT(0) cube complexes, and we show that the geometry of a quasi-median graph essentially reduces to the combinatorics of its hyperplanes. In the second part, we exploit the specific structure of the hyperplanes to state combination results. The main idea is that if a group acts in a suitable way on a quasi-median graph so that…
We introduce and investigate bucolic complexes, a common generalization of systolic complexes and of CAT(0) cubical complexes. They are defined as simply connected prism complexes satisfying some local combinatorial conditions. We study various approaches to bucolic complexes: from graph-theoretic and topological perspective, as well as from the point of view of geometric group theory. In particular, we characterize bucolic complexes by some properties of their 2-skeleta and 1-skeleta (that we call bucolic graphs), by which several known results are generalized. We also show that locally-finit…
The paper surveys some new results and open problems connected with such fundamental combinatorial concepts as polytopes, simplicial complexes, cubical complexes, and subspace arrangements. Particular attention is paid to the case of simplicial and cubical subdivisions of manifolds and, especially, spheres. We describe important constructions which allow to study all these combinatorial objects by means of methods of commutative and homological algebra. The proposed approach to combinatorial problems relies on the theory of moment-angle complexes, currently being developed by the authors. The …
We extend the definition of boundary expansion to CW complexes and prove a Cheeger-Buser-type relation between the spectral gap of the Laplacian and the boundary expansion of an orientable CW complex.
We introduce the polygonalisation complex of a surface, a cube complex whose vertices correspond to polygonalisations. This is a geometric model for the mapping class group and it is motivated by works of Harer, Mosher and Penner. Using properties of the flip graph, we show that the midcubes in the polygonalisation complex can be extended to a family of embedded and separating hyperplanes, parametrised by the arcs in the surface. We study the crossing graph of these hyperplanes and prove that it is quasi-isometric to the arc complex. We use the crossing graph to prove that, generically, differ…
Following Gromov, the coboundary expansion of building-like complexes is studied. In particular, it is shown that for any $n \geq 1$, there exists a constant $ε(n)>0$ such that for any $0 \leq k <n$ the $k$-th coboundary expansion constant of any $n$-dimensional spherical building is at least $ε(n)$.
Let $G$ be a finite abelian group of order $n$ and let $Δ_{n-1}$ denote the $(n-1)$-simplex on the vertex set $G$. The sum complex $X_{A,k}$ associated to a subset $A \subset G$ and $k < n$, is the $k$-dimensional simplicial complex obtained by taking the full $(k-1)$-skeleton of $Δ_{n-1}$ together with all $(k+1)$-subsets $σ\subset G$ that satisfy $\sum_{x \in σ} x \in A$. Let $C^{k-1}(X_{A,k})$ denote the space of complex valued $(k-1)$-cochains of $X_{A,k}$. Let $L_{k-1}:C^{k-1}(X_{A,k}) \rightarrow C^{k-1}(X_{A,k})$ denote the reduced $(k-1)$-th Laplacian of $X_{A,k}$, and let $μ_{k-1}(X_{…
We study the stability of covers of simplicial complexes. Given a map $f:Y\to X$ that satisfies almost all of the local conditions of being a cover, is it close to being a genuine cover of $X$? Complexes $X$ for which this holds are called cover-stable. We show that this is equivalent to $X$ being a cosystolic expander with respect to non-abelian coefficients. This gives a new combinatorial-topological interpretation to cosystolic expansion which is a well studied notion of high dimensional expansion. As an example, we show that the $2$-dimensional spherical building $A_{3}(\mathbb{F}_q)$ is c…
In this paper, we further explore the local-to-global approach for expansion of simplicial complexes that we call local spectral expansion. Specifically, we prove that local expansion in the links imply the global expansion phenomena of mixing and geometric overlapping. Our mixing results also give tighter bounds on the error terms compared to previously known results.
In graph theory there are intimate connections between the expansion properties of a graph and the spectrum of its Laplacian. In this paper we define a notion of combinatorial expansion for simplicial complexes of general dimension, and prove that similar connections exist between the combinatorial expansion of a complex, and the spectrum of the high dimensional Laplacian defined by Eckmann. In particular, we present a Cheeger-type inequality, and a high-dimensional Expander Mixing Lemma. As a corollary, using the work of Pach, we obtain a connection between spectral properties of complexes an…
Combinatorial Complexes: Bridging the Gap Between Cell Complexes and Hypergraphs
University of San Francisco(旧金山大学);University of South Florida(南佛罗里达大学);The University of Manchester(曼彻斯特大学);IBM Corporation(国际商业机器公司(IBM));Imperial College London(伦敦帝国学院);RWTH Aachen University(亚琛工业大学)
In this paper we consider the expansion properties and the spectrum of the combinatorial Laplace operator of a $d$-dimensional Linial-Meshulam random simplicial complex, above the cohomological connectivity threshold. We consider the spectral gap of the Laplace operator and the Cheeger constant as this was introduced by Parzanchevski, Rosenthal and Tessler ($Combinatorica$ 36, 2016). We show that with high probability the spectral gap of the random simplicial complex as well as the Cheeger constant are both concentrated around the minimum co-degree of among all $d-1$-faces. Furthermore, we con…
In this paper we show that a $k$-shellable simplicial complex is the expansion of a shellable complex. We prove that the face ring of a pure $k$-shellable simplicial complex satisfies the Stanley conjecture. In this way, by applying expansion functor to the face ring of a given pure shellable complex, we construct a large class of rings satisfying the Stanley conjecture. Also, by presenting some characterizations of $k$-shellable graphs, we extend some results due to Castrillón-Cruz, Cruz-Estrada and Van Tuyl-Villareal.
Random walks on bounded degree expander graphs have numerous applications, both in theoretical and practical computational problems. A key property of these walks is that they converge rapidly to their stationary distribution. In this work we {\em define high order random walks}: These are generalizations of random walks on graphs to high dimensional simplicial complexes, which are the high dimensional analogues of graphs. A simplicial complex of dimension $d$ has vertices, edges, triangles, pyramids, up to $d$-dimensional cells. For any $0 \leq i < d$, a high order random walk on dimension $i…
Expander graphs have been intensively studied in the last four decades. In recent years a high dimensional theory of expanders has emerged, and several variants have been studied. Among them stand out coboundary expansion and topological expansion. It is known that for every $d$ there are unbounded degree simplicial complexes of dimension $d$ with these properties. However, a major open problem, formulated by Gromov, is whether bounded degree high dimensional expanders exist for $d \geq 2$. We present an explicit construction of bounded degree complexes of dimension $d=2$ which are topological…
We consider higher-dimensional generalizations of the normalized Laplacian and the adjacency matrix of graphs and study their eigenvalues for the Linial-Meshulam model $X^k(n,p)$ of random $k$-dimensional simplicial complexes on $n$ vertices. We show that for $p=Ω(\log n/n)$, the eigenvalues of these matrices are a.a.s. concentrated around two values. The main tool, which goes back to the work of Garland, are arguments that relate the eigenvalues of these matrices to those of graphs that arise as links of $(k-2)$-dimensional faces. Garland's result concerns the Laplacian; we develop an analogo…
Expander graphs have been a focus of attention in computer science in the last four decades. In recent years a high dimensional theory of expanders is emerging. There are several possible generalizations of the theory of expansion to simplicial complexes, among them stand out coboundary expansion and topological expanders. It is known that for every d there are unbounded degree simplicial complexes of dimension d with these properties. However, a major open problem, formulated by Gromov, is whether bounded degree high dimensional expanders, according to these definitions, exist for d >= 2. We …
Ramanujan graphs have extremal spectral properties, which imply a remarkable combinatorial behavior. In this paper we compute the high dimensional Hodge-Laplace spectrum of Ramanujan triangle complexes, and show that it implies a combinatorial expansion property, and a pseudo-randomness result. For this purpose we prove a Cheeger-type inequality and a mixing lemma of independent interest.
In this paper we provide concrete combinatorial formal deformation algorithms, namely sequences of elementary collapses and expansions, which relate various previously extensively studied families of combinatorially defined polyhedral complexes. To start with, we give a sequence of elementary collapses leading from the barycentric subdivision of the neighborhood complex to the Lovász complex of a graph. Then, for an arbitrary lattice ${\mathcal L}$ we describe a formal deformation of the barycentric subdivision of the atom crosscut complex $Γ({\mathcal L})$ to its order complex $Δ(\bar{\mathca…
In this work we introduce a new notion of expansion in higher dimensions that is stronger than the well studied cosystolic expansion notion, and is termed {\em Collective-cosystolic expansion}. We show that tensoring two cosystolic expanders yields a new cosystolic expander, assuming one of the complexes in the product, is not only cosystolic expander, but rather a collective cosystolic expander. We then show that the well known bounded degree cosystolic expanders, the Ramanujan complexes are, in fact, collective cosystolic expanders. This enables us to construct new bounded degree cosystolic …
For graphs there exists a strong connection between spectral and combinatorial expansion properties. This is expressed, e.g., by the discrete Cheeger inequality, the lower bound of which states that $λ(G) \leq h(G)$, where $λ(G)$ is the second smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian of a graph $G$ and $h(G)$ is the Cheeger constant measuring the edge expansion of $G$. We are interested in generalizations of expansion properties to finite simplicial complexes of higher dimension (or uniform hypergraphs). Whereas higher dimensional Laplacians were introduced already in 1945 by Eckmann, the generali…
In this work we present a new local to global criterion for proving a form of high dimensional expansion, which we term cosystolic expansion. Applying this criterion on Ramanujan complexes, yields for every dimension, an infinite family of bounded degree complexes with the topological overlapping property. This answer affirmatively an open question raised by Gromov.
We describe a natural topological generalization of edge expansion for graphs to regular CW complexes and prove that this property holds with high probability for certain random complexes.