Topology of random simplicial complexes: a survey

This expository article is based on a lecture from the Stanford Symposium on Algebraic Topology: Application and New Directions, held in honor of Gunnar Carlsson, Ralph Cohen, and Ib Madsen.Comment: After revisions, now 21 pages, 5 figure

Multivariate central limit theorems for random clique complexes

Motivated by open problems in applied and computational algebraic topology, we establish multivariate normal approximation theorems for three random vectors which arise organically in the study of random clique complexes. These are: (1) the vector of critical simplex counts attained by a lexicographical Morse matching, (2) the vector of simplex counts in the link of a fixed simplex, and (3) the vector of total simplex counts. The first of these random vectors forms a cornerstone of modern homology algorithms, while the second one provides a natural generalisation for the notion of vertex degree, and the third one may be viewed from the perspective of U-statistics. To obtain distributional approximations for these random vectors, we extend the notion of dissociated sums to a multivariate setting and prove a new central limit theorem for such sums using Stein’s method

Homological Domination in Large Random Simplicial Complexes

In this paper we state the homological domination principle for random multi-parameter simplicial complexes, claiming that the Betti number in one specific dimension (which is explicitly determined by the probability multi-parameter) significantly dominates the Betti numbers in all other dimensions. We also state and discuss evidence for two interesting conjectures which would imply a stronger version of the homological domination principle, namely that generically homology of a random simplicial complex coincides with that of a wedges of k-dimensional spheres. These two conjectures imply that under an additional assumption (specified in the paper) a random simplicial complex collapses to a k-dimensional complex homotopy equivalent to a wedge of spheres of dimension k.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur