Remark. Incidence and the exterior derivative [fdip-00AB]

The potential of the preceding discussion is a field on the vertices: one value per site, added and scaled pointwise as in the vertex-field module. Along an edge the difference between the two endpoint values is what the edge carries, so the ring-valued incidence map takes a potential to the field strength read off the edges. On a cubic lattice whose steps are \(x\to x+\mu \), that difference is \(\varphi (x+\mu )-\varphi (x)\).

In the forms notation the potential is a \(0\)-form and the field strength a \(1\)-form, related by \(d\). The incidence map plays the role of \(d\) on \(0\)-forms, and it is not \(d\): the exterior derivative raises the degree of a form, while the incidence map runs from vertex fields to edge fields of one particular graph. A field pullback is composition with a map of the two finite sets, as in the substitution \(f'(x)=f(h(x))\).