The Theory of Multidimensional Persistence

  • Authors:
  • Gunnar Carlsson;Afra Zomorodian

  • Affiliations:
  • Stanford University, Department of Mathematics, Stanford, CA, USA;Dartmouth College, Department of Computer Science, Hanover, NH, USA

  • Venue:
  • Discrete & Computational Geometry - 23rd Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Persistent homology captures the topology of a filtration—a one-parameter family of increasing spaces—in terms of a complete discrete invariant. This invariant is a multiset of intervals that denote the lifetimes of the topological entities within the filtration. In many applications of topology, we need to study a multifiltration: a family of spaces parameterized along multiple geometric dimensions. In this paper, we show that no similar complete discrete invariant exists for multidimensional persistence. Instead, we propose the rank invariant, a discrete invariant for the robust estimation of Betti numbers in a multifiltration, and prove its completeness in one dimension.