Homotopy groups of Hom complexes of graphs

Abstract: The notion of

i m e s

-homotopy from cite{DocHom} is investigated in the context of the category of pointed graphs. The main result is a long exact sequence that relates the higher homotopy groups of the space

H o m_{*} (G, H)

with the homotopy groups of

H o m_{*} (G, H^{I})

. Here

H o m_{*} (G, H)

is a space which parametrizes pointed graph maps from

G

to

H

(a pointed version of the usual

H o m

complex), and

H^{I}

is the graph of based paths in

H

. As a corollary it is shown that

, where

O m e g a H

is the graph of based closed paths in

H

and

[G, K]_{i m e s}

is the set of

i m e s

-homotopy classes of pointed graph maps from

G

to

K

. This is similar in spirit to the results of cite{BBLL}, where the authors seek a space whose homotopy groups encode a similarly defined homotopy theory for graphs. The categorical connections to those constructions are discussed.

Review text

From the abstract: The notion of \(\times\)-homotopy from \textit{A. Dochtermann} [Eur. J. Comb. 30, No. 2, 490--509 (2009; Zbl 1167.05017 )] is investigated in the context of the category of pointed graphs. The main result is a long exact sequence that relates the higher homotopy groups of the space Hom\(_{*}(G,H)\) with the homotopy groups of Hom\(_{*}(G,H^I)\). Here Hom\(_{*}(G,H)\) is a space which parameterizes pointed graph maps from \(G\) to \(H\) (a pointed version of the usual Hom complex), and \(H^I\) is the graph of based paths in \(H\). As a corollary it is shown that \(\pi _i(\)Hom\(_{*}(G,H))\cong [G,\varOmega ^iH]_{\times }\), where \(\varOmega H\) is the graph of based closed paths in \(H\) and \([G,K]_{\times }\) is the set of \(\times \)-homotopy classes of pointed graph maps from \(G\) to \(K\).

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