Weighted simplicial complexes and their representation power of higher-order network data and topology

Hypergraphs and simplical complexes both capture the higher-order interactions of complex systems, ranging from higher-order collaboration networks to brain networks. One open problem in the field is what should drive the choice of the adopted mathematical framework to describe higher-order networks starting from data of higher-order interactions. Unweighted simplicial complexes typically involve a loss of information of the data, though having the benefit to capture the higher-order topology of the data. In this work we show that weighted simplicial complexes allow one to circumvent all the limitations of unweighted simplicial complexes to represent higher-order interactions. In particular, weighted simplicial complexes can represent higher-order networks without loss of information, allowing one at the same time to capture the weighted topology of the data. The higher-order topology is probed by studying the spectral properties of suitably defined weighted Hodge Laplacians displaying a normalized spectrum. The higher-order spectrum of (weighted) normalized Hodge Laplacians is studied combining cohomology theory with information theory. In the proposed framework we quantify and compare the information content of higher-order spectra of different dimension using higher-order spectral entropies and spectral relative entropies. The proposed methodology is tested on real higher-order collaboration networks and on the weighted version of the simplicial complex model "Network Geometry with Flavor."