Computing the fundamental group of a higher-rank graph

Abstract

We compute a presentation of the fundamental group of a higher-rank graph using a coloured graph description of higher-rank graphs developed by the third author. We compute the fundamental groups of several examples from the literature. Our results fit naturally into the suite of known geometrical results about $k$-graphs when we show that the abelianisation of fundamental group is the homology group. We end with a calculation which gives a non-standard presentation of the fundamental group of the Klein bottle to the one normally found in the literature.