MacLane's Theorem for Graph-Like Spaces

The cycle space of a finite graph is the subspace of the edge space generated by the edge sets of cycles, and is a well-studied object in graph theory. Recently progress has been made towards extending the theory of cycle spaces to infinite graphs. Graph-like spaces are a class of topological objects that reconcile the combinatorial properties of infinite graphs with the topological properties of finite graphs. They were first introduced by Thomassen and Vella as a natural, general class of topological spaces for which Menger's Theorem holds. Graph-like spaces are the natural objects for extending classical results from topological graph theory and cycle space theory to infinite graphs. This thesis focuses on the topological properties of embeddings of graph-like spaces, as well as the algebraic properties of graph-like spaces. We develop a theory of embeddings of graph-like spaces in surfaces. We also show how the theory of edge spaces developed by Vella and Richter applies to graph-like spaces. We combine the topological and algebraic properties of embeddings of graph-like spaces in order to prove an extension of MacLane's Theorem. We also extend Thomassen's version of Kuratowski's Theorem for 2-connected compact locally connected metric spaces to the class of graph-like spaces

On the homology of locally finite graphs

We show that the topological cycle space of a locally finite graph is a canonical quotient of the first singular homology group of its Freudenthal compactification, and we characterize the graphs for which the two coincide. We construct a new singular-type homology for non-compact spaces with ends, which in dimension~1 captures precisely the topological cycle space of graphs but works in any dimension.Comment: 30 pages. This is an extended version of the paper "The homology of a locally finite graph with ends" (to appear in Combinatorica) by the same authors. It differs from that paper only in that it offers proofs for Lemmas 3, 4 and 10, as well as a new footnote in Section

Cycle decompositions: from graphs to continua

We generalise a fundamental graph-theoretical fact, stating that every element of the cycle space of a graph is a sum of edge-disjoint cycles, to arbitrary continua. To achieve this we replace graph cycles by topological circles, and replace the cycle space of a graph by a new homology group for continua which is a quotient of the first singular homology group $H_1$. This homology seems to be particularly apt for studying spaces with infinitely generated $H_1$, e.g. infinite graphs or fractals.Comment: Advances in Mathematics (2011

Configuration Spaces Of Convex And Embedded Polygons In The Plane

This paper concerns the topology of configuration spaces of linkages whose underlying graph is a single cycle. Assume that the edge lengths are such that there are no configurations in which all the edges lie along a line. The main results are that, modulo translations and rotations, each component of the space of convex configurations is homeomorphic to a closed Euclidean ball and each component of the space of embedded configurations is homeomorphic to a Euclidean space. This represents an elaboration on the topological information that follows from the convexification theorem of Connelly, Demaine, and Rote