arXiv subjects

Håvard Bakke Bjerkevik

Publications and source records attributed to Håvard Bakke Bjerkevik.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Flip Distance of Non-Crossing Spanning Trees: NP-Hardness and Improved Bounds

We consider the problem of reconfiguring non-crossing spanning trees on point sets. For a set $P$ of $n$ points in general position in the plane, the flip graph $F(P)$ has a vertex for each non-crossing spanning tree on $P$ and an edge between any two spanning trees that can be transformed into each other by the exchange of a single edge. This flip graph has been intensively studied, lately with an emphasis on determining its diameter diam$(F(P))$ for sets $P$ of $n$ points in convex position. The current best bounds are $\frac{14}{9}n-O(1) \leq$ diam$(F(P))<\frac{15}{9}n-3$ [Bjerkevik, Kleist, Ueckerdt, and Vogtenhuber; SODA 2025]. The crucial tool for both the upper and lower bound are so-called *conflict graphs*, which the authors stated might be the key ingredient for determining the diameter (up to lower-order terms). In this paper, we pick up the concept of conflict graphs and show that this tool is even more versatile than previously hoped. As our first main result, we use conflict graphs to show that computing the flip distance between two non-crossing spanning trees is NP-hard, even for point sets in convex position. Interestingly, the result still holds for more constrained flip operations, concretely, compatible flips (where the removed and the added edge do not cross) and rotations (where the removed and the added edge share an endpoint). Extending the line of research from [BKUV SODA25], we present new insights on the diameter of the flip graph. Their lower bound is based on a constant-size pair of trees, one of which is *stacked*. We show that if one of the trees is stacked, then the lower bound is indeed optimal up to a constant term, that is, there exists a flip sequence of length at most $\frac{14}{9}(n-1)$ to any other tree. Lastly, we improve the lower bound on the diameter of the flip graph $F(P)$ for $n$ points in convex position to $\frac{11}{7}n-o(n)$.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2026

Counting Barcodes with the same Betti Curve

This paper considers an important inverse problem in topological data analysis (TDA): How many different barcodes produce the same Betti curve? Equivalently, given a function $β\colon [n]=\{1<\cdots< n\} \to \mathbb{Z}_{\geq 0}$, how many different ways can we write $β$ as a sum of indicator functions supported on intervals in $[n]$? Our answer to this question is to connect persistent homology with the study of the Kostant partition function and the enumerative combinatorics for so-called "magic" juggling sequences studied by Ronald Graham and others. Specifically, we prove an equivalence between our inverse problem and corresponding statements in these other two settings. From an applications and statistics point of view, our work provides a quantification of how lossy the TDA pipeline is when moving from persistent homology to persistent Betti numbers.

math.AT↗

arXiv2025

Reeb Graph of Sample Thickenings

We consider the Reeb graph of a thickening of points sampled from an unknown space. Our main contribution is a framework to transfer reconstruction results similar to the well-known work of Niyogi, Smale, and Weinberger to the setting of Reeb graphs. To this end, we first generalize and study the interleaving distances for Reeb graphs. We find that many of the results previously established for constructible spaces also hold for general topological spaces. We use this to show that under certain conditions for topological spaces with real-valued Lipschitz maps, the Reeb graph of a sample thickening approximates the Reeb graph of the underlying space. Finally, we provide an algorithm for computing the Reeb graph of a sample thickening.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

Computing $p$-presentation distances is hard

Recently, $p$-presentation distances for $p\in [1,\infty]$ were introduced for merge trees and multiparameter persistence modules as more sensitive variations of the respective interleaving distances ($p=\infty)$. It is well-known that computing the interleaving distance is NP-hard in both cases. We extend this result by showing that computing the $p$-presentation distance is NP-hard for all $p\in [1,\infty)$ for both merge trees and $t$-parameter persistence modules for any $t\geq 2$. Though the details differ, both proofs follow the same novel strategy, suggesting that our approach can be adapted to proving the NP-hardness of other distances based on sums or $p$-norms.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2025

Stabilizing decomposition of multiparameter persistence modules

While decomposition of one-parameter persistence modules behaves nicely, as demonstrated by the algebraic stability theorem, decomposition of multiparameter modules is known to be unstable in a certain precise sense. Until now, it has not been clear that there is any way to get around this and build a meaningful stability theory for multiparameter module decomposition. We introduce new tools, in particular $ε$-refinements and $ε$-erosion neighborhoods, to start building such a theory. We then define the $ε$-pruning of a module, which is a new invariant acting like a ``refined barcode'' that shows great promise to extract features from a module by approximately decomposing it. Our main theorem can be interpreted as a generalization of the algebraic stability theorem to multiparameter modules up to a factor of $2r$, where $r$ is the maximal pointwise dimension of one of the modules. Furthermore, we show that the factor $2r$ is close to optimal. Finally, we discuss the possibility of strengthening the stability theorem for modules that decompose into pointwise low-dimensional summands, and pose a conjecture phrased purely in terms of basic linear algebra and graph theory that seems to capture the difficulty of doing this. We also show that this conjecture is relevant for other areas of multipersistence, like the computational complexity of approximating the interleaving distance, and recent applications of relative homological algebra to multipersistence.

math.RT↗

arXiv2024

Flipping Non-Crossing Spanning Trees

For a set $P$ of $n$ points in general position in the plane, the flip graph $F(P)$ has a vertex for each non-crossing spanning tree on $P$ and an edge between any two spanning trees that can be transformed into each other by one edge flip. The diameter ${\rm diam}(F(P))$ of this graph is subject of intensive study. For points in general position, it is between $3n/2-5$ and $2n-4$, with no improvement for 25 years. For points in convex position, it lies between $3n/2 - 5$ and $\approx1.95n$, where the lower bound was conjectured to be tight up to an additive constant and the upper bound is a recent breakthrough improvement over several bounds of the form $2n-o(n)$. In this work, we provide new upper and lower bounds on ${\rm diam}(F(P))$, mainly focusing on points in convex position. We show $14n/9 - O(1) \le {\rm diam}(F(P)) \le 5n/3 - 3$, by this disproving the conjectured upper bound of $3n/2$ for convex position, and relevantly improving both the long-standing lower bound for general position and the recent new upper bound for convex position. We complement these by showing that if one of $T,T'$ has at most two boundary edges, then ${\rm dist}(T,T') \le 2d/2 < 3n/2$, where $d = |T-T'|$ is the number of edges in one tree that are not in the other. To prove both the upper and the lower bound, we introduce a new powerful tool. Specifically, we convert the flip distance problem for given $T,T'$ to the problem of a largest acyclic subset in an associated conflict graph $H(T,T')$. In fact, this method is powerful enough to give an equivalent formulation of the diameter of $F(P)$ for points $P$ in convex position up to lower-order terms. As such, conflict graphs are likely the key to a complete resolution of this and possibly also other reconfiguration problems.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2023

Asymptotic Improvements on the Exact Matching Distance for 2-parameter Persistence

In the field of topological data analysis, persistence modules are used to express geometrical features of data sets. The matching distance $d_\mathcal{M}$ measures the difference between $2$-parameter persistence modules by taking the maximum bottleneck distance between $1$-parameter slices of the modules. The previous best algorithm to compute $d_\mathcal{M}$ exactly runs in $O(n^{8+ω})$ time using $O(n^4)$ space, where $n$ is the number of generators and relations of the modules and $ω$ is the matrix multiplication constant. We improve significantly on this by describing an algorithm with expected running time $O(n^5 \log^3 n)$ and using $O(n^2)$ space. We first solve the decision problem $d_\mathcal{M}\leq λ$ for a constant $λ$ in $O(n^5\log n)$ time by traversing a line arrangement in the dual plane, where each point represents a slice. Then we lift the line arrangement to a plane arrangement in $\mathbb{R}^3$ whose vertices represent possible values for $d_\mathcal{M}$, and use a randomized incremental method to search through the vertices and find $d_\mathcal{M}$. The expected running time of this algorithm is $O((n^4+T(n))\log^2 n)$, where $T(n)$ is an upper bound for the complexity of deciding if $d_\mathcal{M}\leq λ$. Moreover, we show how to compute the matching distance using only linear space, to the price of a much worse time complexity.

math.AT↗

arXiv2023

Tight quasi-universality of Reeb graph distances

We establish tight bi-Lipschitz bounds certifying quasi-universality (universality up to a constant factor) for various distances between Reeb graphs: the interleaving distance, the functional distortion distance, and the functional contortion distance. The definition of the latter distance is a novel contribution, and for the special case of contour trees we also prove strict universality of this distance. Furthermore, we prove that for the special case of merge trees the functional contortion distance coincides with the interleaving distance, yielding universality of all four distances in this case.

math.GT↗

arXiv2022

Tighter Bounds for Reconstruction from $ε$-samples

We show that reconstructing a curve in $\mathbb{R}^d$ for $d\geq 2$ from a $0.66$-sample is always possible using an algorithm similar to the classical NN-Crust algorithm. Previously, this was only known to be possible for $0.47$-samples in $\mathbb{R}^2$ and $\frac{1}{3}$-samples in $\mathbb{R}^d$ for $d\geq 3$. In addition, we show that there is not always a unique way to reconstruct a curve from a $0.72$-sample; this was previously only known for $1$-samples. We also extend this non-uniqueness result to hypersurfaces in all higher dimensions.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2021

$\ell^p$-Distances on Multiparameter Persistence Modules

Motivated both by theoretical and practical considerations in topological data analysis, we generalize the $p$-Wasserstein distance on barcodes to multiparameter persistence modules. For each $p\in [1,\infty]$, we in fact introduce two such generalizations $d_{\mathcal I}^p$ and $d_{\mathcal M}^p$, such that $d_{\mathcal I}^\infty$ equals the interleaving distance and $d_{\mathcal M}^\infty$ equals the matching distance. We show that on 1- or 2-parameter persistence modules over prime fields, $d_{\mathcal I}^p$ is the universal (i.e., largest) metric satisfying a natural stability property; this extends a stability theorem of Skraba and Turner for the $p$-Wasserstein distance on barcodes in the 1-parameter case, and is also a close analogue of a universality property for the interleaving distance given by the second author. We also show that $d_{\mathcal M}^p\leq d_{\mathcal I}^p$ for all $p\in [1,\infty]$, extending an observation of Landi in the $p=\infty$ case. We observe that on 2-parameter persistence modules, $d_{\mathcal M}^p$ can be efficiently approximated. In a forthcoming companion paper, we apply some of these results to study the stability of ($2$-parameter) multicover persistent homology.

math.AT↗

arXiv2020

Stability of higher-dimensional interval decomposable persistence modules

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.

math.AT↗

arXiv2019

Computing the interleaving distance is NP-hard

We show that computing the interleaving distance between two multi-graded persistence modules is NP-hard. More precisely, we show that deciding whether two modules are $1$-interleaved is NP-complete, already for bigraded, interval decomposable modules. Our proof is based on previous work showing that a constrained matrix invertibility problem can be reduced to the interleaving distance computation of a special type of persistence modules. We show that this matrix invertibility problem is NP-complete. We also give a slight improvement of the above reduction, showing that also the approximation of the interleaving distance is NP-hard for any approximation factor smaller than $3$. Additionally, we obtain corresponding hardness results for the case that the modules are indecomposable, and in the setting of one-sided stability. Furthermore, we show that checking for injections (resp. surjections) between persistence modules is NP-hard. In conjunction with earlier results from computational algebra this gives a complete characterization of the computational complexity of one-sided stability. Lastly, we show that it is in general NP-hard to approximate distances induced by noise systems within a factor of 2.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2018

Computational Complexity of the Interleaving Distance

The interleaving distance is arguably the most prominent distance measure in topological data analysis. In this paper, we provide bounds on the computational complexity of determining the interleaving distance in several settings. We show that the interleaving distance is NP-hard to compute for persistence modules valued in the category of vector spaces. In the specific setting of multidimensional persistent homology we show that the problem is at least as hard as a matrix invertibility problem. Furthermore, this allows us to conclude that the interleaving distance of interval decomposable modules depends on the characteristic of the field. Persistence modules valued in the category of sets are also studied. As a corollary, we obtain that the isomorphism problem for Reeb graphs is graph isomorphism complete.

cs.CG↗