Homotopy Type of Independence Complexes of Certain Families of Graphs

Shuchita Goyal, Samir Shukla, Anurag Singh

Published 2019-05-16Version 1

We show that the independence complexes of generalised Mycielskian of complete graphs are homotopy equivalent to a wedge sum of spheres, and determine the number of copies and the dimensions of these spheres. We also prove that the independence complexes of categorical product of complete graphs are wedge sum of circles, upto homotopy. Further, we show that if we perturb a graph $G$ in a certain way, then the independence complex of this new graph is homotopy equivalent to the suspension of the independence complex of $G$.