Higher dimensional distortion of random complexes

Abstract

Using the random complexes of Linial and Meshulam, we exhibit a large family of simplicial complexes for which, whenever affinely embedded into Euclidean space, the filling areas of simplicial cycles is greatly distorted. This phenomenon can be regarded as a higher order analogue of the metric distortion of embeddings of random graphs.

15 pages, additional comments on the work of Newman and Rabinovich added