Closed neighborhood complexes of graphs

Abstract

The closed neighborhood complex $\mathcal{N}[G]$ of a simple graph $G$ is the simplicial complex whose simplices are finite sets of vertices contained in a closed neighborhood of a vertex in $G$. We reveal that the closed neighborhood complex has close connections with other concepts, including the independence complex of the canonical double covering and the independence complex of the neighborhood hypergraph. Furthermore, we show that the fundamental group of the closed neighborhood complex is isomorphic to Grigor'yan--Lin--Muranov--Yau's fundamental group of a graph introduced in the study of path homology.