A computational framework for weighted simplicial homology

Abstract

We provide a bottom up construction of torsion generators for weighted homology of a weighted complex over a discrete valuation ring $R=\mathbb{F}[[\pi]]$. This is achieved by starting from a basis for classical homology of the $n$-th skeleton for the underlying complex with coefficients in the residue field $\mathbb{F}$ and then lifting it to a basis for the weighted homology with coefficients in the ring $R$. Using the latter, a bijection is established between $n+1$ and $n$ dimensional simplices whose weight ratios provide the exponents of the $\pi$-monomials that generate each torsion summand in the structure theorem of the weighted homology modules over $R$. We present algorithms that subsume the torsion computation by reducing it to normalization over the residue field of $R$, and describe a Python package we implemented that takes advantage of this reduction and performs the computation efficiently.