Quantitative aspects of acyclicity

Abstract

We study several aspects of the $k$-th Cheeger constant of a complex X, a parameter that quantifies the distance of $X$ from a complex $Y$ with nontrivial $k$-th cohomology over ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$. Our results include general methods for bounding the cosystolic norm of a cochain and for bounding the Cheeger constant of a complex, a discussion of expansion of pseudomanifolds and geometric lattices, probabilistic upper bounds on Cheeger constants, and application of non-Abelian expansion to random complexes.

33 pages, 2 figures. Section 6 is an expanded version of arXiv:1308.3769