Deterministic simplicial complexes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a deterministic process for growing simplicial complexes from a single vertex, analyzing their structural properties, spectra, and dimensions, revealing complex behaviors like infinite growth and power-law degree distributions.

Contribution

It presents a novel deterministic model for simplicial complex growth and thoroughly analyzes its structural, spectral, and dimensional properties, including constrained versions.

Findings

Number of simplices grows faster than n!

Degree distributions follow power laws for certain dimensions

Spectral and Hausdorff dimensions are infinite

Abstract

We investigate simplicial complexes deterministically growing from a single vertex. In the first step, a vertex and an edge connecting it to the primordial vertex are added. The resulting simplicial complex has a 1-dimensional simplex and two 0-dimensional faces (the vertices). The process continues recursively: On the $n$-th step, every existing $d-$dimensional simplex ($d\leq n-1$) joins a new vertex forming a $(d+1)-$dimensional simplex; all $2^{d+1}-2$ new faces are also added so that the resulting object remains a simplicial complex. The emerging simplicial complex has intriguing local and global characteristics. The number of simplices grows faster than $n!$, and the upper-degree distributions follow a power law. Here, the upper degree (or $d$-degree) of a $d$-simplex refers to the number of $(d{+}1)$-simplices that share it as a face. Interestingly, the $d$-degree distributions evolve quite differently for different values of $d$. We compute the Hodge Laplacian spectra of simplicial complexes and show that the spectral and Hausdorff dimensions are infinite. We also explore a constrained version where the dimension of the added simplices is fixed to a finite value $m$. In the constrained model, the number of simplices grows exponentially. In particular, for $m=1$, the spectral dimension is $2$. For $m=2$, the spectral dimension is finite, and the degree distribution follows a power law, while the $1$-degree distribution decays exponentially.