Quantum Calculus

Finite Topologies

Finite topological spaces are only interesting if non-Hausdorff. The reason is that every Hausdorff finite topological space is just the boring discrete topology. The topology from a simplicial complex is a nice example. I myself still grapple with some of the non-intuitive features. Especially in finite topological spaces coming from …

Manifolds from Partitions

Eugene Wigner in 1939 associated elementary particles with irreducible representations of groups, especially the Poincare group. In a first year algebra course, we learn about representations of finite groups and especially the symmetric group , where there are p(n) irreducible representations, where p(n) is the number of integer partitions of …

Lagrange Riddle

In the program to get rid of any notion of infinity, one necessarily has to demonstrate that very classical and entrenched notions like topics appearing in a contemporary multi-variable calculus course can be replaced and used. Artificial discretisations do not help much in that; they serve as numerical schemes but …

Projective Tales

An update about the scattering problem when an open and closed set merge. During the process the harmonic forms on K and U merge to harmonic forms on G. The open problem is to prove that no new harmonic forms can appear. This is the content of the fusion inequality. b(U) + b(K) – b(G) being non-negative.

A multi-particle energy theorem

A finite abstraact simplicial complex or a finite simple graph comes with a natural finite topological space. Some quantities like the Euler characteristic or the higher Wu characteristics are all topological invariants. One can also reformulate the Lefschetz fixed point theorem for continuous maps on finite topological spaces.

Bosonic and Fermionic Features in Mathematics

Even or odd, symmetric or anti-symmetric, integer or half integer, measures or de Rham currents, densities or differential forms, undirected or directed, orientation oblivious, or orientation sensitive, primes of the form 4k+1 or primes of the form 4k-1, permanents or determinants: there are many notions of mathematics which can be …

Incidence and Intersection

Barycentric and Connection graphs Barycentric graphs depend on incidence, connection graphs on intersection. Here are some examples from this blog. Both graphs have as the vertex set the complete subgraphs of the graph. In the connection graph, we take the intersection, in the Barycentric case, we take incidence. Here are …

Do we need infinity?

In the new Netflix documentary “a trip to infinity” the question of quantum space comes up. It is interesting to see Brian Green (the famous TV star covering about quantum gravity, big bang, fabric of the cosmos elegant universe or string theory) now seems have been converted to the “finite …

More Mandelstuff

A bit more about Mandelbulb, Mandelbrot, Hopfbrot and discrete Mandelstuff. Some slides [PDF]. To be pure to the discrete, we also have a short part on Mandelbrot sets in finite rings … Update September 15, 2022: Mandelbulbs in Mathematica in 3 lines. I worked this morning to get this down …

Graph Products

The video of August 20 also gave a bit of an overview of graph products. I should have mentioned the Lexicographic product (introduced by Hausdorff in 1914) mentioned in my article on Graphs, Groups and Geometry. Here is an abbreviation of the story of that video: for finite simple graphs, …

Soft Manifolds

What is space? In Spring 2021, prompted by work on graph complements of circular graphs, I started to think more about discrete manifolds. One can see the definition on this video on discrete homotopy manifolds. In the spring of 2022, the definition got slightly modified and the name homotopy manifold …

Tree Forest Ratio

The tree forest ratio of a finite simple graph is the number of rooted spanning forests divided by the number of rooted spanning trees. By the Kirchhoff matrix tree theorem and the Chebotarev-Shamis matrix forest theorem this is where Det is the pseudo determinant and K the Kirchhoff matrix the …

Lamplighter Group

This still belongs to the framework of natural groups. The Lamplighter group as a wreath product or semi-direct product is a prototype group which illustrates some mathematics. First of all, the group, like the integers, is not a natural group. Given a metric structure invariant under the group, one can …

The quantum plane riddle

This is a bit of an update on the problem to find the limiting law in the Barycentric central limit theorem. (See some older slides.) The distribution has first experimentally been found in the PeKeNePaPeTe paper in 2012. I proved universality in 2015 using a modification of the Lidski theorem …

Topology of Manifold Coloring

Last summer I have had some fun with codimension 2 manifolds M in a purely differential geometric setting: a positive curvature d-manifold which admits a circular action of isometries has a fixed point set K which consists of even codimension positive curvature manifold. The Grove-Searle situation https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.11973 is when K …

Energy relation for Wu characteristic

The energy theorem for Euler characteristic X= sum h(x)was to express it as sum g(x,y)of Green function entries. We extend this to Wu characteristic w(G)= sum h(x) h(y) over intersecting sets. The new formula is w(G)=sum w(x) w(y) g(x,y)2, where w(x) =1 for even dimesnional x and w(x)=-1 for odd dimensional x.

Physics on finite sets of sets?

Introduction The idea to base physics on the evolution finite set of sets is intriguing. It has been tried as an approach to quantum gravity. Examples are causal dynamical triangulation models or spin networks. It is necessary to bring in some time evolution as otherwise, a model has little chance …

The Hopf Conjectures

The Hopf conjectures were first formulated by Hopf in print in 1931. The sign conjecture claims that positive curvature compact Riemannian 2d-manifolds have positive Euler characteristic and that negative curvature compact Riemannian 2d-manifolds have Euler characteristic with sign (-1)d . The product conjecture claims there is no positive curvature metric …

Poincare-Hopf for Vector Fields on Graphs

The question In discrete Poincare-Hopf for graphs the question appeared how to generalize the result from gradient fields to directed graphs. The paper mentions already the problem what to do in the case of the triangle with circular orientation. The triangle has Euler characteristic 1. An integer index on vertices …

Is there physics for the connection Laplacian?

The classical potential $V(x,y) = 1/|x-y|$ has infinite range which violently clashes with relativity. Solving this problem had required a completely new theory: GR. It remains also a fundamental problem still in general relativity: a Gedanken experiment in which the particles in the sun suddenly transition to particles without mass …

Isospectral Simplicial Complexes

One can not hear a complex! After some hope that some kind of algebraic miracle allows to recover the complex from the spectrum (for example by looking for the minimal polynomial which an eigenvalue has and expecting that the factorization reflects some order structure in the abstract simplicial complex), I …

Hearing the shape of a simplicial complex

A finite abstract simplicial complex has a natural connection Laplacian which is unimodular. The energy of the complex is the sum of the Green function entries. We see that the energy is also the number of positive eigenvalues minus the number of negative eigenvalues. One can therefore hear the Euler characteristic. Does the spectrum determine the complex?

A quaternion valued elliptic complex

This blog entry delivers an other example of an elliptic complex which can be used in discrete Atiyah-Singer or Atiyah-Bott type setups as examples. We had seen that when deforming an elliptic complex with an integrable Lax deformation, we get complex elliptic complexes. We had wondered in that blog entry …

Discrete Atiyah-Singer and Atiyah-Bott

As a follow-up note to the strong ring note, I tried between summer and fall semester to formulate a discrete Atiyah-Singer and Atiyah-Bott result for simplicial complexes. The classical theorems from the sixties are heavy, as they involve virtually every field of mathematics. By searching for analogues in the discrete, …

The Two Operators

The strong ring The strong ring generated by simplicial complexes produces a category of geometric objects which carries a ring structure. Each element in the strong ring is a “geometric space” carrying cohomology (simplicial, and more general interaction cohomologies) and has nice spectral properties (like McKean Singer) and a “counting …

Space and Particles

Elements in the strong ring within the Stanley-Reisner ring still can be seen as geometric objects for which mathematical theorems known in topology hold. But there is also arithemetic. We remark that the multiplicative primes in the ring are the simplicial complexes. The Sabidussi theorem imlies that additive primes (particles) have a unique prime factorization (into elementary particles).

The finitist bunker

As Goedel has shown, mathematics can not tame the danger that some inconsistency develops within the system. One can build bunkers but never will be safe. But the danger is not as big as history has shown. Any crisis which developed has been very fruitful and led to new mathematics. (Zeno paradox->calculus, Epimenids paradox ->Goedel, irrationality crisis ->number fields etc.

Helmholtz free energy for simplicial complexes

Over spring break, the Helmholtz paper [PDF] has finished. (Posted now on “On Helmholtz free energy for finite abstract simplicial complexes”.) As I will have little time during the rest of the semester, it got thrown out now. It is an interesting story, relating to one of the greatest scientist, …

Shannon Entropy and Euler Characteristic

Entropy is the most important functional in probability theory, Euler characteristic is the most important functional in topology. Similarly as the twins Apollo and Artemis displayed above they are closely related. Introduction This blog mentions some intriguing analogies between entropy and combinatorial notions. One can push the analogy in an …

Sphere spectrum paper

The sphere spectrum paper is submitted to the ArXiv. A local copy. It is an addition to the unimodularity theorem and solves part of the riddle about the Green function values, the diagonal elements of the inverse of the matrix 1+A’ where A’ is the adjacency matrix of the connection …

A ring of networks

Assuming the join operation to be the addition, we found a multiplication which produces a ring of oriented networks. We have a commutative ring in which the empty graph is the zero element and the one point graph is the one element. This ring contains the usual integers as a subring. In the form of positive and negative complete subgraphs.

Arithmetic with networks

The join operation on graphs produces a monoid on which one can ask whether there exists an analogue of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. The join operation mirrors the corresponding join operation in the continuum. It leaves spheres invariant. We prove the existence of infinitely many primes in each dimension and also establish Euclid’s lemma, the existence of prime factorizations. An important open question is whether there is a fundamental theorem of arithmetic for graphs.

Euler and Fredholm

The following picture illustrates the Euler and Fredholm theme in the special case of the prime graphs introduced in the Counting and Cohomology paper. The story there only dealt with the Euler characteristic, an additive valuation (in the sense of Klain and Rota). Since then, the work on the Fredholm …

The Unimodularity Theorem for CW Complexes

The unimodularity theorem equates a fredholm determinant with a product of indices. It originally was formulated for graphs or simplicial complexes. It turns out to be valid for more general structures, generalized cellular complexes. While for discrete CW complexes, the fredholm determinant is 1 or -1, in general it can now take more general values but the structures are also more strange: in the continuum much more general than CW complexes as the attached cells do not need to be bound by spheres but can be rather arbitrary.