Eulerian 2-Complexes

Abstract

It is shown that Euler's theorem for graphs can be generalized for 2-complexes. Two notions that generalize cycle and Eulerian tour are introduced (``circlet'' and ``Eulerian cover''), and we show that for a strongly-connected, pure 2-complex, the following are equivalent: (i) each edge meets a positive even number of 2-cells (faces), (ii) the complex can be decomposed as the face-disjoint union of circlets, and (iii) the complex has an Eulerian cover. A number of examples are provided.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figure