Formal naive Dirac operators and graph topology

A bstract Motivated by a recent conjecture of Misumi and Yumoto relating the number of zero modes of lattice Dirac operators to the sum of the Betti numbers of the underlying spacetime manifold, we study formal naive Dirac operators on a class of graphs admitting such in terms of their zero modes. Our main result is that for graphs on which translations commute, the conjecture of Misumi and Yumoto can be shown and indeed can be strengthened to obtain bounds on the individual Betti numbers rather than merely on their sum. Interpretations of the zero modes in terms of graph quotients and of the representation theory of abelian groups are given, and connections with a homology theory for such graphs are highlighted.