Random chain complexes (Q1707592)

Consider an \(n\)-dimensional vector space \(V\) over a finite field \(F=F_q\) of order \(q\) and let \(D\) be a differential on \(V\), that is, a linear operator \(D: V\to V\) with \(D^2=0\). The authors are interested in the probability \(p_r(q, n)\) with which a chain complex \((V, D)\) has homology \({{\ker D}\over{im D}}\) of a given dimension \(r\) for fixed \(n\) and \(q\). The differential \(D\) is uniformly distributed and \(p_r(q, n)\) is simply the ratio \({{c_r(q, n)}\over{c(q, n)}}\), where \(c_r(q, n)\) is the number of complexes with \(r\)-dimensional homology and \(c(q, n)\) is the number of all complexes. The authors mainly focus on large complexes, that is, on the limits as \(q\) or \(n\) go to infinity. Clearly, \(r\) and \(n\) must have the same parity. The main result of the paper is the following: As the order of the field goes to infinity the probability distribution concentrates in the smallest possible dimension of the homology.