On the homotopy and strong homotopy type of complexes of discrete Morse functions

Abstract In this paper, we determine the homotopy types of the Morse complexes of certain collections of simplicial complexes by studying dominating vertices or strong collapses. We show that if K contains two leaves that share a common vertex, then its Morse complex is strongly collapsible and hence has the homotopy type of a point. We also show that the pure Morse complex of a tree is strongly collapsible, thereby recovering as a corollary a result of Ayala et al. (2008, Topology and Its Applications 155, 2084–2089). In addition, we prove that the Morse complex of a disjoint union $K\sqcup L$ is the Morse complex of the join $K*L$ . This result is used to compute the homotopy type of the Morse complex of some families of graphs, including Caterpillar graphs, as well as the automorphism group of a disjoint union for a large collection of disjoint complexes.