Stability of higher-dimensional interval decomposable persistence modules

Abstract

The algebraic stability theorem for $\mathbb{R}$-persistence modules is a fundamental result in topological data analysis. We present a stability theorem for $n$-dimensional rectangle decomposable persistence modules up to a constant $(2n-1)$ that is a generalization of the algebraic stability theorem, and also has connections to the complexity of calculating the interleaving distance. The proof given reduces to a new proof of the algebraic stability theorem with $n=1$. We give an example to show that the bound cannot be improved for $n=2$. We apply the same technique to prove stability results for zigzag modules and Reeb graphs, reducing the previously known bounds to a constant that cannot be improved, settling these questions.