On graphs, homology bases, and triangulated homology spheres

We describe a construction that takes as input a graph and a basis for its first homology, and returns a triangulation of a 3-dimensional homology sphere. This makes precise an idea of M. Gromov and A. Nabutovski. The immediate application, essentially described by Gromov, is to translate problems about asymptotics of homology sphere triangulations to asymptotic counting problems for constant-degree graphs with “short” homology bases. We construct families of 3- sphere triangulations with dual graphs that are expanders, answering a relaxation of a question asked by G. Kalai. Our results also imply that if the number of d-dimensional triangulated homology spheres with n facets is superexponential in n for some d then the same holds for d = 3.