99,745 research outputs found
Statistical hyperbolicity in groups
In this paper, we introduce a geometric statistic called the "sprawl" of a
group with respect to a generating set, based on the average distance in the
word metric between pairs of words of equal length. The sprawl quantifies a
certain obstruction to hyperbolicity. Group presentations with maximum sprawl
(i.e., without this obstruction) are called statistically hyperbolic. We first
relate sprawl to curvature and show that nonelementary hyperbolic groups are
statistically hyperbolic, then give some results for products, for
Diestel-Leader graphs and lamplighter groups. In free abelian groups, the word
metrics asymptotically approach norms induced by convex polytopes, causing the
study of sprawl to reduce to a problem in convex geometry. We present an
algorithm that computes sprawl exactly for any generating set, thus quantifying
the failure of various presentations of Z^d to be hyperbolic. This leads to a
conjecture about the extreme values, with a connection to the classic Mahler
conjecture.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. This is split off from the paper "The geometry
of spheres in free abelian groups.
Explicit expanders with cutoff phenomena
The cutoff phenomenon describes a sharp transition in the convergence of an
ergodic finite Markov chain to equilibrium. Of particular interest is
understanding this convergence for the simple random walk on a bounded-degree
expander graph. The first example of a family of bounded-degree graphs where
the random walk exhibits cutoff in total-variation was provided only very
recently, when the authors showed this for a typical random regular graph.
However, no example was known for an explicit (deterministic) family of
expanders with this phenomenon. Here we construct a family of cubic expanders
where the random walk from a worst case initial position exhibits
total-variation cutoff. Variants of this construction give cubic expanders
without cutoff, as well as cubic graphs with cutoff at any prescribed
time-point.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure
Self-avoiding walks and connective constants
The connective constant of a quasi-transitive graph is the
asymptotic growth rate of the number of self-avoiding walks (SAWs) on from
a given starting vertex. We survey several aspects of the relationship between
the connective constant and the underlying graph .
We present upper and lower bounds for in terms of the
vertex-degree and girth of a transitive graph.
We discuss the question of whether for transitive
cubic graphs (where denotes the golden mean), and we introduce the
Fisher transformation for SAWs (that is, the replacement of vertices by
triangles).
We present strict inequalities for the connective constants
of transitive graphs , as varies.
As a consequence of the last, the connective constant of a Cayley
graph of a finitely generated group decreases strictly when a new relator is
added, and increases strictly when a non-trivial group element is declared to
be a further generator.
We describe so-called graph height functions within an account of
"bridges" for quasi-transitive graphs, and indicate that the bridge constant
equals the connective constant when the graph has a unimodular graph height
function.
A partial answer is given to the question of the locality of
connective constants, based around the existence of unimodular graph height
functions.
Examples are presented of Cayley graphs of finitely presented
groups that possess graph height functions (that are, in addition, harmonic and
unimodular), and that do not.
The review closes with a brief account of the "speed" of SAW.Comment: Accepted version. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:1304.721
Canonical ordering for graphs on the cylinder, with applications to periodic straight-line drawings on the flat cylinder and torus
We extend the notion of canonical ordering (initially developed for planar
triangulations and 3-connected planar maps) to cylindric (essentially simple)
triangulations and more generally to cylindric (essentially internally)
-connected maps. This allows us to extend the incremental straight-line
drawing algorithm of de Fraysseix, Pach and Pollack (in the triangulated case)
and of Kant (in the -connected case) to this setting. Precisely, for any
cylindric essentially internally -connected map with vertices, we
can obtain in linear time a periodic (in ) straight-line drawing of that
is crossing-free and internally (weakly) convex, on a regular grid
, with and ,
where is the face-distance between the two boundaries. This also yields an
efficient periodic drawing algorithm for graphs on the torus. Precisely, for
any essentially -connected map on the torus (i.e., -connected in the
periodic representation) with vertices, we can compute in linear time a
periodic straight-line drawing of that is crossing-free and (weakly)
convex, on a periodic regular grid
, with and
, where is the face-width of . Since ,
the grid area is .Comment: 37 page
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