Chromatic Numbers of Simplicial Manifolds

Higher chromatic numbers χs\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\chi _s$$\end{document} of simplicial complexes naturally generalize the chromatic number χ1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\chi _1$$\end{document} of a graph. In any fixed dimension d, the s-chromatic number χs\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\chi _s$$\end{document} of d-complexes can become arbitrarily large for s≤⌈d/2⌉\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$s\le \lceil d/2\rceil $$\end{document} (Bing in The geometric topology of 3-manifolds, Colloquium Publications, vol 40, American Mathematical Society, Providence, 1983; Heise et al. in Discrete Comput Geom 52:663–679, 2014). In contrast, χd+1=1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\chi _{d+1}=1$$\end{document}, and only little is known on χs\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\chi _s$$\end{document} for ⌈d/2⌉<s≤d\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\lceil d/2\rceil <s\le d$$\end{document}. A particular class of d-complexes are triangulations of d-manifolds. As a consequence of the Map Color Theorem for surfaces (Ringel in Map color theorem, Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften, vol 209, Springer, Berlin, 1974), the 2-chromatic number of any fixed surface is finite. However, by combining results from the literature, we will see that χ2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\chi _2$$\end{document} for surfaces becomes arbitrarily large with growing genus. The proof for this is via Steiner triple systems and is non-constructive. In particular, up to now, no explicit triangulations of surfaces with high χ2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\chi _2$$\end{document} were known. We show that orientable surfaces of genus at least 20 and non-orientable surfaces of genus at least 26 have a 2-chromatic number of at least 4. Via projective Steiner triple systems, we construct an explicit triangulation of a non-orientable surface of genus 2542 and with face vector f=(127,8001,5334)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f=(127,8001,5334)$$\end{document} that has 2-chromatic number 5 or 6. We also give orientable examples with 2-chromatic numbers 5 and 6. For 3-dimensional manifolds, an iterated moment curve construction (Heise et al. 2014) along with embedding results (Bing 1983) can be used to produce triangulations with arbitrarily large 2-chromatic number, but of tremendous size. Via a topological version of the geometric construction of Heise et al. (2014), we obtain a rather small triangulation of the 3-dimensional sphere S3\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$S^3$$\end{document} with face vector f=(167,1579,2824,1412)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$f=(167,1579,2824,1412)$$\end{document} and 2-chromatic number 5.