Higher-Dimensional Symbolic Dynamics: A Textile Framework For 3-graphs

Abstract

Textile systems are best known to model two-dimensional shifts of finite type. In this article, we associate a discrete algebra with a textile system and provide a groupoid model for it. When the textile system is left-resolving, this algebra coincides with the Kumjian--Pask algebra of the associated $2$-graph. The main objective of this paper is to extend textile systems to dimension $3$ so that the resulting structures can, on the one hand, capture all three-dimensional shifts of finite type and, on the other hand, provide a textile-like framework for $3$-graphs extending the well-known connection between $2$-graphs and left-resolving textile systems. We introduce a model of a three-dimensional textile system and investigate the interplay between such textile systems and $3$-graphs. In particular, our investigation shows that the conditions required to form a $3$-graph from a $3$-colored graph (including the delicate associativity condition on tricolored paths), can be encoded in terms of simple pullback diagrams arising from the textile data. We also define homology groups for three-dimensional textiles and prove that these groups coincide with the homology groups of the associated $3$-graphs, thus establishing that our construction is homologically consistent with $3$-graphs.