Logarithmic tree-numbers for acyclic complexes (Q405148)

Summary: For a \(d\)-dimensional cell complex \(\Gamma\) with \(\tilde{H}_{i}(\Gamma)=0\) for \(-1\leq i < d\), an \(i\)-dimensional tree is a non-empty collection \(B\) of \(i\)-dimensional cells in \(\Gamma\) such that \(\tilde{H}_{i}(B\cup \Gamma^{(i-1)})=0\) and \(w(B):= |\tilde{H}_{i-1}(B\cup \Gamma^{(i-1)})|\) is finite, where \(\Gamma^{(i)}\) is the \(i\)-skeleton of \(\Gamma\). The \(i\)-th tree-number is defined \(k_{i}:=\sum_{B}w(B)^{2}\), where the sum is over all \(i\)-dimensional trees. In this paper, we will show that if \(\Gamma\) is acyclic and \(k_{i}>0\) for \(-1\leq i \leq d\), then \(k_{i}\) and the combinatorial Laplace operators \(\Delta_{i}\) are related by \(\sum_{i=-1}^{d}\omega_{i}\,x^{i+1}=(1+x)^{2}\sum_{i=0}^{d-1}\kappa_{i} x^{i}\), where \(\omega_{i}=\log \det \Delta_{i}\) and \(\kappa_{i}=\log k_{i}\). We will discuss various consequences and applications of this equation.