Contemporary Mathematics

Topology of random simplicial complexes: a survey

arXiv:1301.7165v2 [math.AT] 23 Oct 2013

Matthew Kahle

1. Introduction
This expository article is based on a lecture from the Stanford Symposium on
Algebraic Topology: Application and New Directions, held in honor of Gunnar
Carlsson, Ralph Cohen, and Ib Madsen in July 2012.

“I predict a new subject of statistical topology. Rather than

count the number of holes, Betti numbers, etc., one will be
more interested in the distribution of such objects on noncom-
pact manifolds as one goes out to infinity.”
— Isadore Singer, 2004 [61]

1.1. Motivation.
1.1.1. Randomness models the natural world.
(1) The field of topological data analysis has received a lot of attention over
the past several years — see, for example, the survey articles of Carlsson
[16] and Ghrist [30]. In order to quantify the statistical significance of
topological features detected with these methods, it will be helpful to have
firmer probabilistic foundations.
(2) Certain areas of physics seem to require random topology. John Wheeler
suggested in the 1960’s, for example that inside a black hole, one would
need a topological and geometric theory to account for relativity, and
that near the presumed singularity one would also require a quantum
theory, necessarily stochastic. He reasoned that inside a black hole the
topology of space-time itself may best be described as a quantum foam, or
as a probability distribution over shapes rather than any particular fixed
shape.
(3) We might also want to understand better why certain mathematical phe-
nomena are so ubiquitous. For example, a folklore theorem is that “almost
all groups are hyperbolic”. This turns out to be true under a variety of
different measures — see, for example, Ollivier’s survey on random groups
[56].

The author gratefully acknowledges support from DARPA grant # N66001-12-1-4226.

0000
c (copyright holder)

1
2 MATTHEW KAHLE

It is known that many simplicial complexes and posets found in the

wild are homotopy equivalent to bouquets of spheres. See for example
Forman’s comments in Section 1 of his discrete Morse theory notes [28].
He points out that Morse theory gives a convenient way to prove such the-
orems, but goes on to say, “However, that does not explain why so many
simplicial complexes that arise in combinatorics are homotopy equiva-
lent to a wedge of spheres. I have often wondered if perhaps there is
some deeper explanation for this.” From the point of view of this article,
one might hope to make mathematical sense of such questions measure-
theoretically.
(4) Random topology might even provide tractable toy models for difficult to
understand number-theoretic settings.
The following family of simplicial complexes was apparently intro-
duced and first studied topologically by Björner [11]: ∆n has primes less
than n as its vertices, and its faces correspond to square-free numbers
i with 1 ≤ i ≤ n. He pointed out that the Euler characteristic χ(∆n )
coincides with the Mertens function
Xn
M (n) = µ(k),
k=1

where µ(k) is the Möbius function. The Riemann hypothesis is equivalent

to the statement that M (n) satisfies
|M (n)| = O(n1/2+ )
for every  > 0, suggesting that studying the topology of ∆n might be
quite interesting.
Björner proved these complexes are all homotopy equivalent to wedges
of spheres (not necessarily of the same dimension), hence homology H∗ (∆n )
is torsion-free. He also provided some estimates for Betti numbers, show-
ing that
n (log log n)k
βk ≈
2 log n k!
for k ≥ 0 fixed, and also that
X 2n
βk (∆n ) = 2 + O nθ


π
k≥0

for all θ > 17/54.

Pakianathan and Winfree [57] studied a fairly general framework
“quota complexes”, and gave natural topological formulations of the prime
number theorem, twin prime conjecture, Goldbach’s conjecture, and the
existence of odd perfect numbers, among others.
Unfortunately, these attractive papers do not seem to get us any closer
to proving the Riemann hypothesis, but these kinds of complexes merit
further study, and might be interesting to model probabilistically. Of
course primes are not random, but they are pseudorandom, and for many
purposes behave as if they were a random subset of the integers with
density predicted by the prime number theorem — the Green–Tao theorem
is a celebrated example [31].
 TOPOLOGY OF RANDOM SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES: A SURVEY 3

1.1.2. The probabilistic method provides existence proofs. This is a complemen-

tary point of view. Random objects often have desirable properties, and in some
cases it is difficult to construct explicit examples. This has been one of the most
influential ideas in discrete mathematics of the past several decades — for a broad
overview of the subject, see Alon and Spencer’s book [3].
(1) In extremal graph theory, for example, the probabilistic method has proved
to be an extremely powerful tool. Almost all graphs are known to have
strong Ramsey properties (i.e. no large cliques or independent sets), but
after several decades of research no one knows how to construct exam-
ples. This somewhat paradoxical situation is sometimes referred to as the
problem of “finding hay in a haystack.”
(2) Since early work of Pinsker [58], and even earlier work of Barzdin and
Kolmogorov [9], it has been known that in various senses almost all graphs
are expanders. For an extensive survey of expander graphs and their
many applications in mathematics and computer science, see [38]. Some
of the work surveyed in this article may be viewed as higher-dimensional
analogues of this paradigm. One of the goals of this article is to describe
expander-like qualities of random simplicial complexes.
(3) The probabilistic method has found applications in other areas of math-
ematics as well. Gromov asked, “What does a random group look like?
As we shall see the answer is most satisfactory: nothing like we have ever
seen before,” [32], and then later fulfilled his own prediction by proving
the existence of a finitely generated group Γ whose Cayley graph admits
no uniform embedding in the Hilbert space [33]. Rather than exhibit such
a group explicitly, he makes a very delicate measure-theoretic argument.

1.2. Earlier work. Although this article will focus on random simplicial com-
plexes, we first put this in a larger context of random topology.
(1) One of the earliest references to random topology of which I am aware
is Milnor’s 1964 paper “Most knots are wild” [53]. Milnor showed that
“most” knots are wild, in the sense of wild embeddings being Baire dense in
the space of all embeddings. In the concluding remarks he points out that
questions about embeddings being wild or knotted with probability one
are of a very different kind. In particular, he noted that with probability
one, Brownian motion in 4-space does not self intersect and asked if is
knotted. Kendall [46] and independently Weinberger [66] showed that
the answer is “no.”
(2) Random triangulated surfaces were studied by Pippenger and Schleich
[59]. Their model is randomly gluing together n oriented triangles, uni-
formly over all such glueings, and they compute the expected genus E[gn ]
of the resulting oriented surface as n → ∞. Part of the motivation dis-
cussed comes from physics — such random surfaces arise in 2-dimensional
quantum gravity and as world-sheets in string theory.
(3) Dunfield and W. Thurston [24] simultaneously studied this model for
random surfaces, and they pointed out that in general one can not make
a random 3-manifold by gluing together tetrahedra in an analogous way,
as the probability that a gluing results in a manifold tends to 0 as the
number of tetrahedra n → ∞. They introduced a new model for random
4 MATTHEW KAHLE

3-manifolds M where one takes a random walk on the mapping class

group, resulting in a random gluing of a two handlebodies.
(4) Farber and Kappeler [27] introduced random planar linkages, were the
lengths of the links are random. The configuration space for such a link-
age is a smooth manifold with probability one. They let the number of
links (and hence the dimension of the manifold) tend to infinity, and give
asymptotic formula for the expectations of the Betti numbers.
(5) Gaussian random functions on manifolds were studied by Adler and Tay-
lor, and in particular they discovered the kinematic formula for the ex-
pected Euler characteristic of the sub-level sets. See for example, Chapter
12 of their book [2]. In this setting, giving a formula for the expectation
of the Betti numbers seems to be a difficult open problem. For a survey
of this area see [1].
(6) Random 2-dimensional simplicial complexes were first studied by Linial
and Meshulam [49], and the k-dimensional version by Meshulam and
Wallach [52]. These are natural higher-dimensional analogues of ran-
dom graphs — the main results of [49], [52], and [41] are cohomological
analogues of the Erdős–Rényi theorem which characterizes the threshold
for connectivity of a random graph. All of these theorems describe sharp
topological phase transitions where cohomology passes to vanishing with
high probability, within a very short window of parameter.
Since the influential papers [49] and [52], random complexes and their topo-
logical properties have continued to be explored by several teams of researchers.
Random flag complexes [39, 41] are another generalization of Erdős–Rényi ran-
dom graphs to higher dimensions, putting a measure on a wide range of possible
topologies.

2. Random graphs
Random graphs are 1-dimensional random simplicial complexes. The ran-
dom graph G(n, p), sometimes called the Erdős–Rényi model, has vertex set [n] =
{1, 2, . . . , n} and every possible edge appears independently with probability p. The
n

closely related random graph G(n, m) is selected uniformly among all (m 2) graphs
on n vertices with exactly m edges.
It is also sometimes useful to consider a closely related “random graph process”;
see Figure 1. In the process
(n2 )
{G(n, m)}m=1 ,
the mth edge is selected uniformly randomly from the remaining
 
n
− (m − 1)
2
edges.
In random graph theory, one is usually interested in the asymptotic behavior
of such graphs as n → ∞, and p = p(n). We say that an event happens with high
probability (abbreviated w.h.p.) if the probability approaches one as n → ∞. A
celebrated theorem about the topology of random graphs is the following [26].
 TOPOLOGY OF RANDOM SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES: A SURVEY 5

Figure 1. The beginning of a random graph process on n = 12 vertices.

Theorem 2.1 (Erdős–Rényi, 1959). Let  > 0 be fixed, and G ∼ G(n, p). If
(1 + ) log n
p≥ ,
n
then G is connected w.h.p., and if
(1 − ) log n
p≤ ,
n
then G is disconnected w.h.p.
(Although this is generally attributed to Erdős and Rényi, it seems that Erdős
and Rényi actually proved the analogous statement for G(n, m), and Stepanov first
proved the G(n, p) statement in 1969 [65].)
The strongest possible statement of the Erdős–Rényi theorem is slightly sharper
than this, as follows. Let
β˜0 (G) = # of connected components of G − 1,
i.e. to a topologist, the reduced 0th Betti number of G.
Theorem 2.2 (Erdős–Rényi, 1959). Let G = G(n, p) where
log n + c
p= ,
n
and c ∈ R is fixed. Then as n → ∞, β̃0 (G) is asymptotically Poisson distributed
with mean e−c . In particular,
−c
P[G is connected] → e−e
Corollary 2.3. Let ω → ∞ arbitrarily slowly as n → ∞.
If
log n + ω
p≥ ,
n
6 MATTHEW KAHLE

then G is connected w.h.p., and if

log n − ω
p≤ ,
n
then G is disconnected w.h.p.
Is there any way we could guess that p = log n/n the right threshold, if we
did not already know that? To give an intuition for this, we set p = (log n + c)/n
with c ∈ R fixed, and ask what is the expected number of isolated vertices. The
probability that a vertex is isolated is (1−p)n−1 , by independence. Then by linearity
of expectation, the expected number of isolated vertices X0 is given by
E[X0 ] = n(1 − p)n−1 .
Since p → 0 as n → ∞, it is reasonable to approximate 1 − p by e−p , and then it
follows easily that E[X0 ] → e−c as n → ∞. With a little more work, for example
by computing all the higher moments, one can show that in fact X0 converges in
law to a Poisson distribution with mean e−c . See, for example, Chapter 8 in [3] for
an overview of limit theorems in random graph theory.
To finish the proof of Theorem 2.2, one also needs a structure theorem, namely
that for p is in this range, w.h.p. G ∼ G(n, p) consists of only two kinds of con-
nected components: a unique “giant component,” and isolated vertices. Given this
structure, G is connected if and only if there are no isolated vertices. See Chapter
7 of [12] for a complete proof.
Corollary 2.3 shows that p = log n/n is a sharp threshold for connectivity
of G(n, p), meaning that the phase transition from probability 0 to probability 1
happens within a very narrow window. More precisely, a function f is said to be
a sharp threshold for a graph property P if there exists a function g = o(f ) such
that

 1 :p≥f +g
P[G(n, p) ∈ P] →
0 :p≤f −g


Exactly which monotone graph properties have sharp thresholds is a question

which has been extensively studied. See for example the paper of Friedghut with
appendix by Bourgain [29].
Corollary 2.3 can be summarized as saying that the threshold function for “G
is connected” is the same as the threshold function for “G has no isolated vertices.”
The following result of Bollobás and Thomasson takes this idea all the way to its
logical conclusion [13].
(n2 )
Theorem 2.4. For a random graph process {G(n, m)}m=1 , with high probability
min{M : G(n, M ) has no isolated vertices} = min{M : G(n, M ) is connected}.

We leave it to readers to convince themselves that Theorem 2.4 is even sharper

than Corollary 2.3.
There is another topological phase transition for G ∼ G(n, p), namely where
cycles first appear, or to a topologist, where H1 (G) first becomes nontrivial. See
Pittel [60] for a proof of the following characterization of the appearance of cycles.
 TOPOLOGY OF RANDOM SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES: A SURVEY 7

Figure 2. The beginning of a random 2-complex process on n =

12 vertices.

Theorem 2.5. Let G ∼ G(n, p), where p = c/n and c > 0 is constant.

 1 :c≥1
P[H1 (G) 6= 0] →
 √
1 − c exp(c/2 + c2 /4) : c < 1
Note that in contrast to the connectivity threshold, this threshold is sharp on
one side but not on the other.

3. Random 2-complexes
Linial and Meshulam initiated the topological study of random 2-dimensional
simplicial complexes Y (n, p) in [49]. This model random simplicial complex is
edge set [n]


defined to have vertex set [n], 2 (i.e. the underlying graph is a complete
graph), and each of the n3 possible triangle faces is included with probability

p, independently. The beginning of a random 2-complex process is illustrated in

Figure 2.
The main result of [49] is a cohomological analogue of Theorem 2.1.
Theorem 3.1 (Linial–Meshulam, 2006). Let  > 0 be fixed and Y ∼ Y (n, p).
If
p ≥ (2 + ) log n/n,
1
then w.h.p. H (Y, Z/2) = 0, and if
p ≤ (2 − ) log n/n,
1
then w.h.p. H (Y, Z/2) 6= 0.
Although Theorem 3.1 is analogous to Theorem 2.1, the proof is much harder.
Linial and Meshulam used a combination of co-isoperimetric inequalities (analogous
to Cheeger constant of a graph) and intricate cocycle-counting arguments.
A few comments might be in order.
(1) The Linial–Meshulam theorem is sharper than this, analogous to Corollary
2.3, but in this survey article we sometimes trade the strongest result for
a simpler statement.
8 MATTHEW KAHLE

(2) The threshold p = 2 log n/n is just what is necessary in order to ensure
that there are no isolated edges. The analogue of the “stopping time”
Theorem 2.4 for the random 2-complex process was recently established
in [43].
(3) Theorem 3.1 is stated for cohomology, but universal coefficients for ho-
mology and cohomology give the analogous result for homology.
(4) It was shown by Meshulam and Wallach [52] that the same result holds
with (Z/`)-coefficients for every fixed ` (and for an analogous d-dimensional
model).
(5) The threshold for homology with Z-coefficients is still unknown. It might
seem that this would follow from Meshulam and Wallach’s work, but the
problem is that there could be `-torsion, where ` is growing with n.
Linial and Meshulam asked in [49] for the threshold for simple connectivity,
and this was eventually shown to be much larger [7].
Theorem 3.2 (Babson et al., 2011). Let  > 0 be fixed and Y ∼ Y (n, p). If
n
p≥ √ ,
n
then w.h.p. π1 (Y ) = 0, and if
n−
p≤ √ ,
n
then w.h.p. π1 (Y ) is a nontrivial group, hyperbolic in the sense of Gromov.
The study of fundamental groups of random 2-complexes is continued in [37].
A group G is said to have Kazhdan’s property (T) if the trivial representation is
an isolated point in the unitary dual of G equipped with the Fell topology. More
intuitively, Property (T) is an “expander-like” property of groups; in fact the first
explicit examples of expanders were constructed by Margulis from Cayley graphs
of quotients of (T) groups such as SL(3, Z) [51]. For a comprehensive overview of
Property (T) see the monograph [10].
The following theorem shows that the threshold for π1 (Y ) to have Kazhdan’s
Property (T) is the same as the vanishing threshold for H 1 (Y, Z/2) [37].
Theorem 3.3 (Hoffman et al., 2012). Let  > 0 be fixed and Y ∼ Y (n, p).
Then as n → ∞,

 1 : p ≥ (2 + ) log n/n
P[π1 (Y ) is Kazhdan] →
0 : p ≤ (2 − ) log n/n


The proof that Y (n, p) is Kazhdan when p ≥ (2+) log n/n utilizes the following
theorem of Żuk [67].
Theorem 3.4 (Żuk). If X is a pure 2-dimensional locally-finite simplicial com-
plex so that for every vertex v, the vertex link lkv (X) is connected and the normalized
graph Laplacian L = L(lkv (X)) has smallest positive eigenvalue λ2 (L) > 1/2, then
π1 (X) has property (T).
The link of a vertex in the random 2-complex Y (n, p) has the same probability
distribution as a random graph G(n − 1, p). So Żuk’s theorem reduces the proof
of Theorem 3.3 to a question about Laplacians of random graphs. However, new
 TOPOLOGY OF RANDOM SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES: A SURVEY 9

results about such Laplacians are still required in order to prove Theorem 3.3.
Establishing the following comprises most of the work in [37].
Theorem 3.5 (Hoffman et al., 2012). Fix k ≥ 0 and  > 0. Let 0 = λ1 ≤ λ2 ≤
· · · ≤ λn ≤ 2 be the eigenvalues of the normalized Laplacian of the random graph
G(n, p). There is a constant C = C(k) so that when
√
(k + 1) log n + C log n log log n
p≥
n
is satisfied, then
λ2 > 1 − ,
−k
with probability at least 1 − o(n ).
The proof of Theorem 3.3 only requires Theorem 3.5 with k = 1 and  = 1/2.
By Żuk’s theorem, the proof is almost immediate once Theorem 3.5 is established:
There are n vertex links, and for each one, the probability that its spectral gap is
smaller than 1/2 is o(n−1 ). So the probability that there is at least one vertex link
with spectral gap too small is o(1) by a union bound — the probability that at
least one bad event occurs is never more than the sum of the probabilities of the
individual bad events.
The k = 0 case of Theorem 3.5 is also of particular interest, as this gets very
close to the connectivity threshold for G(n, p). It would be interesting to see just
how close one can get. Consider a random graph process, for example, adding
one edge at a time: is the graph already an expander (smallest positive eigenvalue
bounded away from zero) at the moment of connectivity? We discuss applications
of Theorem 3.5 with other values of k in Section 4.

Both Theorem 3.1 and Theorem 3.3 have the following corollary.
Corollary 3.6. Let  > 0 be fixed and Y ∼ Y (n, p). If
p ≥ (2 + ) log n/n,
then w.h.p. H1 (Y, Q) = 0, and if
p ≤ (2 − ) log n/n,
then w.h.p. H1 (Y, Q 6= 0.
This follows from Theorem 3.1 by the universal coefficient theorem, and follows
from Theorem 3.3, since a Kazhdan group has finite abelianization.

Costa and Farber described two phase transitions for the cohomological dimen-
sion cd π1 (Y ) [19, 20].
Theorem 3.7 (Costa–Farber). Let Y ∼ Y (n, p), and set p = n−α .
(1) If α > 1 then w.h.p. cd π1 (Y ) = 1 ,
(2) if 3/5 < α < 1 then w.h.p. cd π1 (Y ) = 2, and
(3) if 1/2 < α < 3/5 then w.h.p. cd π1 (Y ) = ∞.
To give some intuition for where the exponent 3/5 comes from: the smallest
triangulation of the projective plane has 6 vertices and 10 faces, and these appear as
subcomplexes once p  n−6/10 = n−3/5 . Costa and Farber show that the induced
map on fundamental group is injective, hence for p in this regime there is 2-torsion
in π1 (Y ).
10 MATTHEW KAHLE

The random fundamental groups are related to other models random finitely
presented groups, as in the survey article [56], especially the “triangular” model
studied earlier by Żuk, but the geometric and topological considerations in the
random fundamental group setting are somewhat more complicated.
As an aside, very different models of random groups based on random graphs,
with large but finite cohomological dimension, for example, have recently been
studied by Charney–Farber [17], and by Davis–Kahle [21].

The two-dimensional analogue of Theorem 2.5 describing the first appearance

of cycles has also been studied, in a series of papers by Kozlov [47], Cohen et al.
[18], and Aronshtam–Linial [4]. In this last paper, the following strong estimate is
established.
Theorem 3.8 (Aronshtam–Linial, 2012). Let Y ∼ Y (n, p) where p = c/n and
c > 0 is constant. If c > 2.75381 . . . then w.h.p. H2 (Y ) 6= 0.
Cohen et al. had already noticed that this theorem holds with c > 3, essentially
for linear algebraic reasons. It is surprisingly difficult to improve the constant past
3. The number 2.75381 . . . is the unique positive solution of a fairly complicated
equation described in the paper, and Aronshtam and Linial conjecture that this
constant is best possible.

Homology vanishing, simple connectivity, and Property (T) are all monotone
properties for random 2-complexes. This is in contrast to what we will see in
Section 4, where each homology group Hk (X),k ≥ 1, passes through two distinct
phase transitions: one where it first appears, and a later one where it vanishes.

4. Random flag complexes

The flag complex X(H) of a graph H is the maximal simplicial complex com-
patible with H as its 1-skeleton; in other words, the i-dimensional faces of X(H)
correspond to the cliques of order i + 1 in H. (Such complexes have apparently
arisen independently several times, and X(H) is also sometimes called the clique
complex or the Vietoris–Rips complex of H.)
We define the random flag complex X(n, p) to be the flag complex of the random
graph G(n, p). Every simplicial complex is homeomorphic to a flag complex, e.g.
by taking the barycentric subdivision. So X(n, p) puts a measure on a wide variety
of topologies as n → ∞.
One can also consider a random flag complex process, which is the same prob-
ability space as the random graph process, edges being added one at a time. See
Figure 3. The Betti numbers of an instance of such a process on n = 100 vertices
and roughly 3000 steps are illustrated in Figure 4.
We see immediately that homology no longer behaves in a monotone way with
respect to the underlying parameter.
4.1. Vanishing homology. First of all, we check that, as suggested by Figure
4, there is a range of p outside of which Hk = 0 with high probability [39].
For the sake of simplicity, we state theorems in the next few sections with
assuming p = n−α .
Theorem 4.1. Let k ≥ 1 and α > 0 be fixed, p = n−α , and X ∼ X(n, p).
(1) If α > 1/k then w.h.p. Hk (X, Z) = 0.
 TOPOLOGY OF RANDOM SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES: A SURVEY 11

Figure 3. The beginning of a random flag complex process.

2000
β0
1800 β1
β2
1600 β3
1400 β4
homology

β5
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
edge probability p

Figure 4. The Betti numbers for the beginning of a random flag

complex process on n = 100 vertices. (Computation and image cour-
tesy of Afra Zomorodian.)

(2) If α < 1/(2k + 1), then w.h.p. Hk (X, Z) = 0.

The proof of (1) is based on showing first that homology is supported on cycles
of small support (bounded in size as n → ∞), and then showing that every such
cycle is a boundary.
The key observation for (2) is that link of a vertex in a random flag complex is a
random flag complex with shifted parameter. Indeed, even intersecting the links of
several vertex links results in another random flag complex. Then the Nerve Lemma
allows one to bootstrap local information about connectivity of a large number of
random graphs into global information about cohomology vanishing. This argument
shows something stronger topologically: that if p = n−α where α < 1/(2k + 1) then
w.h.p. X is k-connected, i.e. πi (X) = 0 for i ≤ k. Recent work of Babson shows
that this exponent 1/3 is tight when k = 1 [6].
12 MATTHEW KAHLE

In Section 4.4 we will see that the exponent in (2) can be improved, with a
spectral gap argument, if one relaxes to cohomology with rational coefficients.

4.2. Nontrivial homology and cohomology. It is also known that for ev-
ery k ≥ 0 there is a range of p = pk (n) for which Hk (X(n, p)) 6= 0 with high
probability. Here are three ideas for how one might try to prove this.
(1) Linear algebra. Let fi denote the number of i-dimensional faces of X.
Then if fk > fk−1 + fk+1 , we already have that Hk 6= 0 for dimensional
reasons, i.e.
βk ≥ −fk−1 + fk − fk+1 .
(2) Homological argument: sphere. Try to find a subcomplex Y home-
omorphic to a sphere S k , and a simplicial map f : X → Y such that
f |Y = id. Then the homology of Y is naturally a summand of the homol-
ogy of X, and in particular Hk (X) 6= 0.
(3) Cohomological argument: isolated face. If σ is a k-dimensional
face not contained in any (k + 1)-dimensional face, then the characteristic
function of σ represents a cocycle. If one can somehow show that this
function is not also a coboundary, then one has a nontrivial class.
All three of these approaches work, and in roughly the same range of param-
eter. They also work equally well for with any choice of coefficients. Any of these
approaches yields the following, for example.

Theorem 4.2. Let α > 0 be fixed, p = n−α , and X ∼ X(n, p). If 1/(k + 1) <
α < 1/k, then w.h.p. Hk 6= 0.

The first two approaches are discussed in [39], and the third approach in [41].
In Section 4.4 we will see that the third approach has a slight edge on the other two
approaches at the upper end of the window of nontrivial homology. In this case,
a much sharper estimate may be obtained. So the exponent 1/k in Theorems 4.1
and 4.2 is sharp. The exponent 1/(k + 1) in Theorem 4.2 is also sharp, as we will
see in Section 4.4.

4.3. Limit theorems. Much more can be shown in the nontrivial regime. Not
only do we know that H k 6= 0 w.h.p., but we can also understand the expectation
of βk and its limiting distribution.
The following asymptotic formula for the expectation follows from the linear
algebra approach described above.

Theorem 4.3. Let α > 0 be fixed, p = n−α , and X ∼ X(n, p). If 1/(k + 1) <
α < 1/k, then
E[βk ]
n

(k+1) → 1,
k+1 p 2
as n → ∞.

Here E[βk ] denotes the expectation of βk . A similar formula can be given for
the asymptotic variance Var[βk ].
The following central limit theorem characterizes the limiting distribution [42].
 TOPOLOGY OF RANDOM SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES: A SURVEY 13

Theorem 4.4 (Kahle–Meckes). Let α > 0 be fixed, p = n−α , and X ∼ X(n, p).
If 1/(k + 1) < α < 1/k, then
βk − E[βk ]
p → N (0, 1)
Var[βk ]
as n → ∞.
Here N (0, 1) is the standard normal distribution with mean 0 and variance 1,
and the convergence is in distribution.

4.4. Sharp thresholds for rational cohomology. The following gives a

sharp upper threshold for rational cohomology [41] of random flag complexes. The
Erdős-Renyi theorem corresponds to the k = 0 case.
Theorem 4.5. Let k ≥ 1 and  > 0 be fixed, and X = X(n, p).
(1) If
 1/(k+1)
(k/2 + 1 + ) log n
p≥ ,
n
then
P[H k (X, Q) = 0] → 1,
(2) and if
 1/(k+1)
(k/2 + 1 − ) log n
n−1/k+ ≤ p ≤ ,
n
then
P[H k (X, Q) = 0] → 0,
as n → ∞.
The main tools used to prove Theorem 4.5 this are Theorem 3.5 above which
gives a concentration result for the spectral gap, together with the following Theo-
rem 4.6.
Theorem 4.6 (Garland, Ballman–Świątkowski). Let ∆ be a pure D-dimensional
finite simplicial complex such that for every (D − 2)-dimensional face σ, the link
lk∆ (σ) is connected and has spectral gap is at least λ2 [lk∆ (σ)] > 1 − 1/D. Then
H D−1 (∆, Q) = 0.
Theorem 4.6 is a special case of Theorem 2.5 of Ballman–Świątkowski [8], which
in turn based on earlier work of Garland. For a deeper discussion of Garland’s
method, see A. Borel’s account in Séminaire Bourbaki [14]. It is worth noting that
Kazhdan had already proved certain cases of Serre’s conjecture in 1967 [45], and
that this is also the paper in which he introduced Property (T).
As a corollary, many random flag complexes have nontrivial rational homology
only in middle degree.
Corollary 4.7. Let d ≥ 1 and 1/(d + 1) < α < 1/d be fixed. If p = n−α and
X ∼ X(n, p), then
H
e i (X, Q) = 0 unless i = d

It is conceivable that Theorem 4.5 could be sharpened to the following.

14 MATTHEW KAHLE

Conjecture 4.8. If
 1/(k+1)
(k/2 + 1) log n + (k/2) log log n + c
p= ,
n
where c ∈ R is constant, then the dimension of kth cohomology βk approaches a
Poisson distribution with mean
(k/2 + 1)k/2 −c
µ= e .
(k + 1)!
In particular,
(k/2 + 1)k/2 −c
 
k
P[H (X, Q) = 0] → exp − e ,
(k + 1)!
as n → ∞.
This conjecture is equivalent to showing that in this regime, cohomology is
w.h.p. generated by characteristic functions on isolated k-faces. This is analogous
to the fact that when c ∈ R is constant, and G ∼ G(n, p) where
log n + c
p= ,
n
w.h.p. G consists of a giant component and isolated vertices.
4.5. Torsion. The question of torsion in random homology is still fairly mys-
terious, but for certain models of random simplicial complex, we know that torsion
will be quite large. It may be surprising to learn, for example, that there exists a
2-dimensional Q-acyclic simplicial complex S on 31 vertices with H1 (S, Z) cyclic of
order
|H1 (S, Z)| = 736712186612810774591.
The complex is easy to define. The vertices are the elements of the cyclic group
Z/31, the 1-skeleton is a complete graph, and a set of three vertices {x, y, z} span
a 2-dimensional face if and only if
x + y + z ≡ 1, 2, or 9 (mod 31).
This type of “sum complex” was introduced and proved to be Q-acyclic using dis-
crete Fourier analysis by Linial, Meshulam, and Rosenthal [48], and I found this
particular example choosing 1, 2, 9 randomly with a calculation in Sage [64].
Work of Kalai [44] showed that for Q-acyclic complexes, the expected size of
the torsion group is enormous. For example, for a random 2-dimensional Q-acyclic
complex Sn on n vertices,
2
E [|H1 (S, Z)|] ≥ ecn
for some constant c > 0. This is in some sense the worst case scenario for torsion:
all 2-dimensional Q-acyclic complexes have
2
|H1 (S, Z)| ≤ eCn ,
for some other constant C > 0; see for example Proposition 3 in Soulé [62].

Kalai’s result tells us about the expected size of these random torsion groups,
but thirty years later, not much more seems to be known about their expected
structure. One natural conjecture might be that the p-parts of these random torsion
groups obey approach Cohen–Lenstra distributions in the limit.
 TOPOLOGY OF RANDOM SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES: A SURVEY 15

The Cohen–Lensta distribution over finite abelian p-groups proposes that the
probability of every group is inversely proportional to the size of its automorphism
group. These measures arise naturally in certain number-theoretic settings and
have been the subject of a lot of attention, for example in recent work of Ellenberg,
Venkatesh, and Westerland [25]. As Lyons points out [50], the natural measures
on Q-acyclic complexes are certain determinantal measures rather than uniform
distributions, so this question should be understood with respect to these measures.
In contrast to random Q-acyclic complexes, one might guess for random 2-
complexes or random flag complexes, would be that there may be a window when
Hi (X, k) = 0 for every fixed field k but such that Hi (X, Z) 6= 0, but that this
window is very small. The philosophy is that once homology is a finite group,
it should only take a relatively small number of random relations to kill it. In
particular I would guess the following.

Conjecture 4.9. Let d ≥ 3 and

1 1
<α<
d+1 d
be fixed. If p = n−α and X ∼ X(n, p), then w.h.p. X is homotopy equivalent to a
bouquet of d-dimensional spheres.

It was shown in [39] that if α < 1/3, then w.h.p. π1 (X) = 0. Since simply-
connected Moore spaces are unique up to homotopy equivalence, Conjecture 4.9 is
equivalent to showing that for this range of p, H∗ (X) is w.h.p. torsion-free.

5. Comments
Now that several different models of random simplicial complex have been
studied, we are starting to see a few common themes emerging.

5.1. There are at least two kinds of topological phase transitions.

The “upper” phase transition where homology or cohomology vanishes seems easier
to understand cohomologically. Examples of this kind of phase transition include
the Erdős–Rényi theorem, the Linial–Meshulam theorem, and Theorem 4.5 above.
These thresholds tend to be sharp, happening in a very narrow window.
The “lower” phase transition where homology or cohomology passes from van-
ishing to nonvanishing seems easier to understand homologically. Theorem 2.5
characterizes the first appearance of cycles in G(n, p). The higher-dimensional ana-
logue of this phase transition in random complexes is apparently much more subtle,
but interesting recent work studying this phase transition appears in [4] and [5].
These thresholds tend to be sharp on one side, not on the other.
For random graphs, the basic philosophy local properties such as “contains a tri-
angle” have coarse thresholds, whereas global properties, such as “connected”, have
sharp thresholds. For precise statements, see for example the paper by Friedgut
with appendix by Bourgain [29]. Since isolated faces generate cohomology near
the upper phase transition, by the same argument, this is a global property and
we should guess the upper threshold is sharp. On the other hand, homology seems
to first appear, supported on small spheres, so the lower threshold may tend to be
coarse.
16 MATTHEW KAHLE

5.2. Homology and cohomology try to be as small as possible. With

this motto we mean something more geometric, namely that near the lower thresh-
old, homology tends to be supported on small classes. For example, homology
of random geometric complexes in the sparse regime has a basis of vertex-minimal
spheres [40]. This happens for both Čech and Vietoris–Rips complexes, even though
the minimal spheres are combinatorially different in the two cases. This already
accounts for the difference in the formulas for expectation of the Betti numbers in
the sparse regime.
On the other hand, near the upper threshold cohomology is generated by small
classes, namely characteristic functions on isolated k-faces.
The existence of these two phase transitions already implies something about
what a theory of random persistent homology will have to look like. For example,
after a certain point in a random filtration, death times of whatever cycles remain
should be well approximated by an appropriate Poisson process.
5.3. Nature abhors homology. (With apologies to Aristotle.) Homology
is, after all said to measure the number of “holes” in a topological space, and holes
are made out of vacuum. More seriously, it is often the case that unless there is a
good reason random homology is forced to be there, then it is likely to vanish or
be “small.”
Suppose you have some measure on “pairs of random linear maps f : A → B and
g : B → C satisfying g ◦ f = 0”. What can we say about the resulting distribution
on HB ? Sometimes you can guess the answer from random linear algebra.
For example, one might guess that if
dim A  dim B  dim C
then there is a good chance that the map g : B → C is injective, in which case
HB = 0. Or else perhaps ker g is merely small, but then this still bounds the size
of homology. Similarly, if
dim A  dim B  dim C,
then one might expect f : A → B is probably surjective (or nearly so) and so one
expects that HB is small. In fact the only place the one place where we actually
expect to see large homology, if dimension were the only consideration, would be if
dim A  dim B  dim C.
So you might guess that dim HB ≈ max{0, − dim A + dim B − dim C}.
The random flag complex X(n, p) is an example of where this kind of argument
works surprisingly well. In a random flag complex, the theorems so far tell us that
we should only expect to see one or two nontrivial Betti numbers at any given part
in the process, and that the overlap between two nonzero Betti numbers should
not be too large. If we make the simplifying assumption that all of the reduced
Betti numbers are zero except for one, then the nonzero Betti number equals the
absolute value of the reduced Euler characteristic. The upshot is that the expected
Euler characteristic E[χ̃] is easy to compute, as linearity of expectation gives that
       
n n 3 n 6 n 10
E[χ̃] = −1 + n − p+ p − p + p − ....
2 3 4 5
See, for example, Figure 5. Using his software Perseus [54], Vidit Nanda com-
puted fifty complete flag complex processes on n = 25 vertices, and the average
 TOPOLOGY OF RANDOM SIMPLICIAL COMPLEXES: A SURVEY 17

Figure 5. The average of 50 complete random flag complex pro-

cesses on n = 25 vertices (continuous curves), plotted against |E[χ̃]|
(blue stars). As in Figure 4, the horizontal axis is the number of
edges and the vertical axis the Betti numbers. (Computation and
image courtesy of Vidit Nanda.)

is plotted against the expected Euler characteristic. It is quite striking that the
prediction is so good, especially considering that all the theory is as n → ∞ and
p → 0, but here the prediction seems to work reasonably well, even for relatively
small n and large p.

5.4. Random simplicial complexes are expanders. Random simplicial

complexes have many expander-like properties. Higher-dimensional analogues of
expanders have attracted a lot of attention recently— see for example the discus-
sion in [23], and also Gromov’s recent work on “geometric overlap” properties of
expanders [34, 35].
For a geometric application, expander graphs are well understood to be im-
possible to embed in Euclidean space with small metric distortion, by work of
Bourgain [15]. Volume distortion analogues of this were recently established for
random simplicial complexes by Newman–Rabinovich [55] and by Dotterrer [22].
We would like to better understand the higher-dimensional analogues of the
Cheeger–Buser inequalities relating spectral gap and the “bottleneck” expansion
constant. For recent work on higher-dimensional analogues of Cheeger–Buser, see
Gundert–Wagner [36], and Steenbergen et al. [63].

5.5. A multi-parameter model. A model that deserves more attention is

the multi-parameter random complex ∆(n; p1 , p2 , . . . ). Here there are n vertices,
the probability of an edge is p1 = p1 (n), and the complex is built inductively by
dimension in so that the probability of every k-dimensional simplex, conditioned
that its entire (k − 1)-dimensional boundary is already in place, is pk = pk (n),
independently.
18 MATTHEW KAHLE

Several of the random simplicial complexes discussed here are special cases of
this model; in particular, the random graph
G(n, p) = ∆(n; p1 , 0, 0, . . . ),
the random 2-complex
Y (n, p) = ∆(n; 1, p2 , 0, 0, . . . ),
and the random flag complex
X(n, p) = ∆(n; p1 , 1, 1, . . . ).

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to IAS for hosting me for two weeks in January 2013, and for
having a chance to present this material in two talks at the MacPherson seminar
while the article was in preparation, and to receive feedback from a friendly audi-
ence. I also thank Peter Landweber for a careful read of an earlier draft, and for
several helpful suggestions.

I dedicate this article to Gunnar Carlsson, and thank him for his encouragement
and support.

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The Ohio State University, Department of Mathematics

E-mail address: [email protected]