Isoperimetric Inequalities for Ramanujan Complexes and Topological Expanders

Expander graphs have been intensively studied in the last four decades (Hoory et al., Bull Am Math Soc, 43(4):439–562, 2006; Lubotzky, Bull Am MathSoc, 49:113–162, 2012). In recent years a high dimensional theory of expanders has emerged, and several variants have been studied. Among them stand out coboundary expansion and topological expansion. It is known that for every d there are unbounded degree simplicial complexes of dimension d with these properties. However, a major open problem, formulated by Gromov (Geom Funct Anal 20(2):416–526, 2010), is whether bounded degree high dimensional expanders exist for \({d \geq 2}\). We present an explicit construction of bounded degree complexes of dimension \({d = 2}\) which are topological expanders, thus answering Gromov’s question in the affirmative. Conditional on a conjecture of Serre on the congruence subgroup property, infinite sub-family of these give also a family of bounded degree coboundary expanders. The main technical tools are new isoperimetric inequalities for Ramanujan Complexes. We prove linear size bounds on \({\mathbb{F}_2}\) systolic invariants of these complexes, which seem to be the first linear \({\mathbb{F}_2}\) systolic bounds. The expansion results are deduced from these isoperimetric inequalities.