Extremal Betti Numbers of Vietoris–Rips Complexes

Upper bounds on the Betti numbers over an arbitrary field of Vietoris–Rips complexes are established, and examples of such complexes with large Betti numbers are given.     

Vietoris–Rips Complexes of Planar Point Sets

Fix a finite set of points in Euclidean n-space \mathbbEⁿ\mathbb{E}^{n} , thought of as a point-cloud sampling of a certain domain D ì \mathbbEⁿD\subset\mathbb{E}^{n} . The Vietoris–Rips complex is a combinatorial simplicial complex based on proximity of neighbors that serves as an easily-computed but high-dimensional approximation to the homotopy type of D. There is a natural “shadow” projection map from the Vietoris–Rips complex to \mathbbEⁿ\mathbb{E}^{n} that has as its image a more accurate n-dimensional approximation to the homotopy type of D.     

Linear-Size Approximations to the Vietoris–Rips Filtration

The Vietoris–Rips filtration is a versatile tool in topological data analysis. It is a sequence of simplicial complexes built on a metric space to add topological structure to an otherwise disconnected set of points. It is widely used because it encodes useful information about the topology of the underlying metric space. This information is often extracted from its so-called persistence diagram. Unfortunately, this filtration is often too large to construct in full. We show how to construct an $O(n)$ O ( n ) -size filtered simplicial complex on an $n$ n -point metric space such that its persistence diagram is a good approximation to that of the Vietoris–Rips filtration. This new filtration can be constructed in $O(n\log n)$ O ( n log n ) time. The constant factors in both the size and the running time depend only on the doubling dimension of the metric space and the desired tightness of the approximation. For the first time, this makes it computationally tractable to approximate the persistence diagram of the Vietoris–Rips filtration across all scales for large data sets. We describe two different sparse filtrations. The first is a zigzag filtration that removes points as the scale increases. The second is a (non-zigzag) filtration that yields the same persistence diagram. Both methods are based on a hierarchical net-tree and yield the same guarantees.     

Hermite–Padé approximation approach to shapes of rotating drops

This paper is devoted to the equilibrium shapes of rotating liquid drops. Families of axisymmetric shapes are found using a perturbation technique for the governing nonlinear equation. Bifurcation and turning points are located by applying a special type of Hermite–Padé approximation.     

A generalization of k-Cohen–Macaulay simplicial complexes

For a positive integer k and a non-negative integer t, a class of simplicial complexes, to be denoted by k-CM _t , is introduced. This class generalizes two notions for simplicial complexes: being k-Cohen–Macaulay and k-Buchsbaum. In analogy with the Cohen–Macaulay and Buchsbaum complexes, we give some characterizations of CM _t (=1?CM _t ) complexes, in terms of vanishing of some homologies of its links, and in terms of vanishing of some relative singular homologies of the geometric realization of the complex and its punctured space. We give a result on the behavior of the CM _t property under the operation of join of two simplicial complexes. We show that a complex is k-CM _t if and only if the links of its non-empty faces are k-CM _t?1. We prove that for an integer s≤d, the (d?s?1)-skeleton of a (d?1)-dimensional k-CM _t complex is (k+s)-CM _t . This result generalizes Hibi’s result for Cohen–Macaulay complexes and Miyazaki’s result for Buchsbaum complexes.     

Colorings of simplicial complexes and vector bundles over Davis–Januszkiewicz spaces

We show that coloring properties of a simplicial complex K are reflected by splitting properties of a bundle over the associated Davis–Januszkiewicz space whose Chern classes are given by the elementary symmetric polynomials in the generators of the Stanley-Reisner algebra of K.     

On the Gorensteinness of broken circuit complexes and Orlik–Terao ideals

It is proved that the broken circuit complex of an ordered matroid is Gorenstein if and only if it is a complete intersection. Several characterizations for a matroid that admits such an order are then given, with particular interest in the h-vector of broken circuit complexes of the matroid. As an application, we prove that the Orlik–Terao algebra of a hyperplane arrangement is Gorenstein if and only if it is a complete intersection. Interestingly, our result shows that the complete intersection property (and hence the Gorensteinness as well) of the Orlik–Terao algebra can be determined from the last two nonzero entries of its h-vector.     

A Mayer–Vietoris Formula for Persistent Homology with an Application to Shape Recognition in the Presence of Occlusions

In algebraic topology it is well known that, using the Mayer–Vietoris sequence, the homology of a space X can be studied by splitting X into subspaces A and B and computing the homology of A, B, and A∩B. A natural question is: To what extent does persistent homology benefit from a similar property? In this paper we show that persistent homology has a Mayer–Vietoris sequence that is generally not exact but only of order 2. However, we obtain a Mayer–Vietoris formula involving the ranks of the persistent homology groups of X, A, B, and A∩B plus three extra terms. This implies that persistent homological features of A and B can be found either as persistent homological features of X or of A∩B. As an application of this result, we show that persistence diagrams are able to recognize an occluded shape by showing a common subset of points.     

Computing the roots of sparse high–degree polynomials that arise from the study of random simplicial complexes

Numerical Algorithms - The problem of computing the roots of a particular sequence of sparse polynomials pn(t) is considered. Each instance pn(t) incorporates only the n +?1 monomial terms...     

Maximal Betti numbers of Cohen–Macaulay complexes with a given <Emphasis Type="Italic">f</Emphasis>-vector

Given the f-vector f = (f₀, f₁, . . .) of a Cohen–Macaulay simplicial complex, it will be proved that there exists a shellable simplicial complex Δ_f with f(Δ_f) = f such that, for any Cohen–Macaulay simplicial complex Δ with f(Δ) = f, one has for all i and j, where f(Δ) is the f-vector of Δ and where β _ij (I _Δ) are graded Betti numbers of the Stanley–Reisner ideal I _Δ of Δ. The first author is supported by JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists. Received: 23 January 2006