A recursive construction of an acyclic matching on the independence complex of a graph with a simplicial vertex

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Barik, Sucharita, Mondal, Anupam, Mukherjee, Sajal
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Barik, Sucharita
Mondal, Anupam
Mukherjee, Sajal
author_facet Barik, Sucharita
Mondal, Anupam
Mukherjee, Sajal
contents We provide a recursive construction of an acyclic matching (also known as a gradient vector field, an equivalent notion to a discrete Morse function) on the independence complex of a graph with a simplicial vertex using given acyclic matchings on the independence complexes of specific subgraphs. As an application, we determine the homotopy type of the independence complexes of the family of chordal graphs and of a class of graphs generalising the comparability graphs of grid posets in an algorithmic and combinatorial manner via discrete Morse theory, some of which were previously obtained by sophisticated homotopy theoretic techniques. Even when the homotopy type is not easily determinable, our construction may be applied to obtain a pre-processing framework for efficient homology computation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_12606
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A recursive construction of an acyclic matching on the independence complex of a graph with a simplicial vertex
Barik, Sucharita
Mondal, Anupam
Mukherjee, Sajal
Combinatorics
Algebraic Topology
57Q70, 05E45, 05C69, 55P10
We provide a recursive construction of an acyclic matching (also known as a gradient vector field, an equivalent notion to a discrete Morse function) on the independence complex of a graph with a simplicial vertex using given acyclic matchings on the independence complexes of specific subgraphs. As an application, we determine the homotopy type of the independence complexes of the family of chordal graphs and of a class of graphs generalising the comparability graphs of grid posets in an algorithmic and combinatorial manner via discrete Morse theory, some of which were previously obtained by sophisticated homotopy theoretic techniques. Even when the homotopy type is not easily determinable, our construction may be applied to obtain a pre-processing framework for efficient homology computation.
title A recursive construction of an acyclic matching on the independence complex of a graph with a simplicial vertex
topic Combinatorics
Algebraic Topology
57Q70, 05E45, 05C69, 55P10
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12606