Simplicial complexes are increasingly used to understand the topology of complex systems as different as brain networks and social interactions. It is therefore of special interest to extend the study of percolation to simplicial complexes. Here we propose a topological theory of percolation for discrete hyperbolic simplicial complexes. Specifically, we consider hyperbolic manifolds in dimension $d=2$ and $d=3$ formed by simplicial complexes, and we investigate their percolation properties in the presence of topological damage, i.e., when nodes, links, triangles or tetrahedra are randomly removed. We show that in $d=2$ simplicial complexes there are four topological percolation problems and in $d=3$ there are six. We demonstrate the presence of two percolation phase transitions characteristic of hyperbolic spaces for the different variants of topological percolation. While most of the known results on percolation in hyperbolic manifolds are in $d=2$, here we uncover the rich critical behavior of $d=3$ hyperbolic manifolds, and show that triangle percolation displays a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition. Finally, we provide evidence that topological percolation can display a critical behavior that is unexpected if only node and link percolation are considered.

• Received 17 August 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.98.052308