Sphere geometry and invariants

Abstract

A finite abstract simplicial complex G defines two finite simple graphs: the Barycentric refinement G1, connecting two simplices if one is a subset of the other and the connection graph G', connecting two simplices if they intersect. We prove that the Poincare-Hopf value i(x)=1-X(S(x)), where X is Euler characteristics and S(x) is the unit sphere of a vertex x in G1, agrees with the Green function value g(x,x),the diagonal element of the inverse of (1+A'), where A' is the adjacency matrix of G'. By unimodularity, det(1+A') is the product of parities (-1)^dim(x) of simplices in G, the Fredholm matrix 1+A' is in GL(n,Z), where n is the number of simplices in G. We show that the set of possible unit sphere topologies in G1 is a combinatorial invariant of the complex G. So, also the Green function range of G is a combinatorial invariant. To prove the invariance of the unit sphere topology we use that all unit spheres in G1 decompose as a join of a stable and unstable part. The join operation + renders the category X of simplicial complexes into a monoid, where the empty complex is the 0 element and the cone construction adds 1. The augmented Grothendieck group (X,+,0) contains the graph and sphere monoids (Graphs, +,0) and (Spheres,+,0). The Poincare-Hopf functionals i(G) as well as the volume are multiplicative functions on (X,+). For the sphere group, both i(G) as well as Fredholm characteristic are characters. The join + can be augmented with a product * so that we have a commutative ring (X,+,0,*,1)for which there are both additive and multiplicative primes and which contains as a subring of signed complete complexes isomorphic to the integers (Z,+,0,*,1). We also look at the spectrum of the Laplacian of the join of two graphs. Both for addition + and multiplication *, one can ask whether unique prime factorization holds.