On Groupoids and Hypergraphs

We present a novel construction of finite groupoids whose Cayley graphs have large girth even w.r.t. a discounted distance measure that contracts arbitrarily long sequences of edges from the same colour class (subgroupoid), and only counts transitions between colour classes (cosets). These groupoids are employed towards a generic construction method for finite hypergraphs that realise specified overlap patterns and avoid small cyclic configurations. The constructions are based on reduced products with groupoids generated by the elementary local extension steps, and can be made to preserve the symmetries of the given overlap pattern. In particular, we obtain highly symmetric, finite hypergraph coverings without short cycles. The groupoids and their application in reduced products are sufficiently generic to be applicable to other constructions that are specified in terms of local glueing operations and require global finite closure.