Finding large counterexamples by selectively exploring the Pachner graph

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Burton, Benjamin A., He, Alexander
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Burton, Benjamin A.
He, Alexander
author_facet Burton, Benjamin A.
He, Alexander
contents We often rely on censuses of triangulations to guide our intuition in $3$-manifold topology. However, this can lead to misplaced faith in conjectures if the smallest counterexamples are too large to appear in our census. Since the number of triangulations increases super-exponentially with size, there is no way to expand a census beyond relatively small triangulations; the current census only goes up to $10$ tetrahedra. Here, we show that it is feasible to search for large and hard-to-find counterexamples by using heuristics to selectively (rather than exhaustively) enumerate triangulations. We use this idea to find counterexamples to three conjectures which ask, for certain $3$-manifolds, whether one-vertex triangulations always have a "distinctive" edge that would allow us to recognise the $3$-manifold.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2303_06321
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Finding large counterexamples by selectively exploring the Pachner graph
Burton, Benjamin A.
He, Alexander
Geometric Topology
Computational Geometry
We often rely on censuses of triangulations to guide our intuition in $3$-manifold topology. However, this can lead to misplaced faith in conjectures if the smallest counterexamples are too large to appear in our census. Since the number of triangulations increases super-exponentially with size, there is no way to expand a census beyond relatively small triangulations; the current census only goes up to $10$ tetrahedra. Here, we show that it is feasible to search for large and hard-to-find counterexamples by using heuristics to selectively (rather than exhaustively) enumerate triangulations. We use this idea to find counterexamples to three conjectures which ask, for certain $3$-manifolds, whether one-vertex triangulations always have a "distinctive" edge that would allow us to recognise the $3$-manifold.
title Finding large counterexamples by selectively exploring the Pachner graph
topic Geometric Topology
Computational Geometry
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.06321