Ask Your Question
1

Categorical product of simplicial complexes

asked 2014-07-03 00:25:08 +0100

Does Sage have some function that takes the categorical product of two finite simplicial complexes? I see that the SimplicialComplex library has a product() function that appears to take the topologicalproduct of two complexes (details here: http://www.sagemath.org/doc/reference...), but this isn't what I'm looking for.

The example given on the linked webpage is Simplex(1).product(Simplex(1)), which returns [('L0R0', 'L0R1', 'L1R1'), ('L0R0', 'L1R0', 'L1R1')], or a square with a diagonal through it. This is what I would expect from a topological product, since the product of two lines is a square. However, the categorical product of two complexes is different and is in general not homeomorphic to their topological product. The categorical product of two edges (1-simplexes) should be a tetrahedron and not a square.

Is there a Sage function that will do this for me? I'm not familiar with the markdown syntax on this forum so sorry about the poor formatting.

edit retag flag offensive close merge delete

Comments

The product of two 1-simplices isn't a 2-simplex (triangle)? Sorry if this is naive.

kcrisman gravatar imagekcrisman ( 2014-07-03 19:00:51 +0100 )edit

No, see my comment on John Palmieri's answer. The (categorical) product of two 1-simplexes is the standard simplex on (1+1)*(1+1) = 4 vertices, or the standard 3-simplex, or a tetrahedron.

Vikram Saraph gravatar imageVikram Saraph ( 2015-09-20 00:38:13 +0100 )edit

1 Answer

Sort by ยป oldest newest most voted
0

answered 2014-07-03 18:13:24 +0100

There is no Sage function to do this. It shouldn't be hard to write, though. Can you provide a description of the categorical product, in terms of the (maximal) simplices of the two factors?

edit flag offensive delete link more

Comments

I completely forgot I posted this question! Anyways, the categorical product of two complexes A and B is a complex with vertex set V(A) \times V(B), and a set of vertices S in V(A) \times V(B) is a simplex if pi_1(S) is a simplex in A and pi_2(S) is a simplex in B, where pi_i are projections onto each coordinate.

If A is the standard n simplex, and B is the standard m simplex, then A \times B is the standard (n+1)(m+1) - 1 simplex.

This definition can be found in Dmitry Kozlov's Combinatorial Algebraic Topology.

Vikram Saraph gravatar imageVikram Saraph ( 2015-09-20 00:36:28 +0100 )edit

Your Answer

Please start posting anonymously - your entry will be published after you log in or create a new account.

Add Answer

Question Tools

1 follower

Stats

Asked: 2014-07-03 00:25:08 +0100

Seen: 526 times

Last updated: Jul 03 '14