Hom complexes and homotopy theory in the category of graphs

We investigate a notion of $\times$-homotopy of graph maps that is based on the internal hom associated to the categorical product in the category of graphs. It is shown that graph $\times$-homotopy is characterized by the topological properties of the \Hom complex, a functorial way to assign a poset (and hence topological space) to a pair of graphs; \Hom complexes were introduced by Lov\'{a}sz and further studied by Babson and Kozlov to give topological bounds on chromatic number. Along the way, we also establish some structural properties of \Hom complexes involving products and exponentials of graphs, as well as a symmetry result which can be used to reprove a theorem of Kozlov involving foldings of graphs. Graph $\times$-homotopy naturally leads to a notion of homotopy equivalence which we show has several equivalent characterizations. We apply the notions of $\times$-homotopy equivalence to the class of dismantlable graphs to get a list of conditions that again characterize these. We end with a discussion of graph homotopies arising from other internal homs, including the construction of `$A$-theory' associated to the cartesian product in the category of reflexive graphs.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, final version, to be published in European J. Com

Homotopy groups of Hom complexes of graphs

The notion of $\times$-homotopy from \cite{DocHom} is investigated in the context of the category of pointed graphs. The main result is a long exact sequence that relates the higher homotopy groups of the space \Hom_*(G,H) with the homotopy groups of \Hom_*(G,H^I). Here \Hom_*(G,H) is a space which parametrizes pointed graph maps from $G$ to $H$ (a pointed version of the usual \Hom complex), and $H^I$ is the graph of based paths in $H$. As a corollary it is shown that \pi_i \big(\Hom_*(G,H) \big) \cong [G,\Omega^i H]_{\times}, where $\Omega H$ is the graph of based closed paths in $H$ and $[G,K]_{\times}$ is the set of $\times$-homotopy classes of pointed graph maps from $G$ to $K$. This is similar in spirit to the results of \cite{BBLL}, where the authors seek a space whose homotopy groups encode a similarly defined homotopy theory for graphs. The categorical connections to those constructions are discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, final version, to be published in J. Combin. Theory Ser.

Homomorphism complexes, reconfiguration, and homotopy for directed graphs

The neighborhood complex of a graph was introduced by Lov\'asz to provide topological lower bounds on chromatic number. More general homomorphism complexes of graphs were further studied by Babson and Kozlov. Such `Hom complexes' are also related to mixings of graph colorings and other reconfiguration problems, as well as a notion of discrete homotopy for graphs. Here we initiate the detailed study of Hom complexes for directed graphs (digraphs). For any pair of digraphs graphs $G$ and $H$, we consider the polyhedral complex $\text{Hom}(G,H)$ that parametrizes the directed graph homomorphisms $f: G \rightarrow H$. Hom complexes of digraphs have applications in the study of chains in graded posets and cellular resolutions of monomial ideals. We study examples of directed Hom complexes and relate their topological properties to certain graph operations including products, adjunctions, and foldings. We introduce a notion of a neighborhood complex for a digraph and prove that its homotopy type is recovered as the Hom complex of homomorphisms from a directed edge. We establish a number of results regarding the topology of directed neighborhood complexes, including the dependence on directed bipartite subgraphs, a digraph version of the Mycielski construction, as well as vanishing theorems for higher homology. The Hom complexes of digraphs provide a natural framework for reconfiguration of homomorphisms of digraphs. Inspired by notions of directed graph colorings we study the connectivity of $\text{Hom}(G,T_n)$ for $T_n$ a tournament. Finally, we use paths in the internal hom objects of digraphs to define various notions of homotopy, and discuss connections to the topology of Hom complexes.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures; V2: some changes in notation, clarified statements and proofs, other corrections and minor revisions incorporating comments from referee