arXiv subjects

Henry Adams

Publications and source records attributed to Henry Adams.

53 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Metric thickenings and group actions

Let $G$ be a group acting properly and by isometries on a metric space $X$; it follows that the quotient or orbit space $X/G$ is also a metric space. We study the Vietoris-Rips and Čech complexes of $X/G$. Whereas (co)homology theories for metric spaces let the scale parameter of a Vietoris-Rips or Čech complex go to zero, and whereas geometric group theory requires the scale parameter to be sufficiently large, we instead consider intermediate scale parameters (neither tending to zero nor to infinity). As a particular case, we study the Vietoris-Rips and Čech thickenings of projective spaces at the first scale parameter where the homotopy type changes.

math.MG↗

arXiv2019

A torus model for optical flow

We propose a torus model for high-contrast patches of optical flow. Our model is derived from a database of ground-truth optical flow from the computer-generated video \emph{Sintel}, collected by Butler et al.\ in \emph{A naturalistic open source movie for optical flow evaluation}. Using persistent homology and zigzag persistence, popular tools from the field of computational topology, we show that the high-contrast $3\times 3$ patches from this video are well-modeled by a \emph{torus}, a nonlinear 2-dimensional manifold. Furthermore, we show that the optical flow torus model is naturally equipped with the structure of a fiber bundle, related to the statistics of range image patches.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2019

The persistent homology of cyclic graphs

We give an $O(n^2(k+\log n))$ algorithm for computing the $k$-dimensional persistent homology of a filtration of clique complexes of cyclic graphs on $n$ vertices. This is nearly quadratic in the number of vertices $n$, and therefore a large improvement upon the traditional persistent homology algorithm, which is cubic in the number of simplices of dimension at most $k+1$, and hence of running time $O(n^{3(k+2)})$ in the number of vertices $n$. Our algorithm applies, for example, to Vietoris--Rips complexes of points sampled from a curve in $\mathbb{R}^d$ when the scale is bounded depending on the geometry of the curve, but still large enough so that the Vietoris--Rips complex may have non-trivial homology in arbitrarily high dimensions $k$. In the case of the plane $\mathbb{R}^2$, we prove that our algorithm applies for all scale parameters if the $n$ vertices are sampled from a convex closed differentiable curve whose convex hull contains its evolute. We ask if there are other geometric settings in which computing persistent homology is (say) quadratic or cubic in the number of vertices, instead of in the number of simplices.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2019

Metric Thickenings, Borsuk-Ulam Theorems, and Orbitopes

Thickenings of a metric space capture local geometric properties of the space. Here we exhibit applications of lower bounding the topology of thickenings of the circle and more generally the sphere. We explain interconnections with the geometry of circle actions on Euclidean space, the structure of zeros of trigonometric polynomials, and theorems of Borsuk-Ulam type. We use the combinatorial and geometric structure of the convex hull of orbits of circle actions on Euclidean space to give geometric proofs of the homotopy type of metric thickenings of the circle. Homotopical connectivity bounds of thickenings of the sphere allow us to prove that a weighted average of function values of odd maps $S^n \to \mathbb{R}^{n+2}$ on a small diameter set is zero. We prove an additional generalization of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem for odd maps $S^{2n-1} \to \mathbb{R}^{2kn+2n-1}$. We prove such results for odd maps from the circle to any Euclidean space with optimal quantitative bounds. This in turn implies that any raked homogeneous trigonometric polynomial has a zero on a subset of the circle of a specific diameter; these results are optimal.

math.GT↗

arXiv2019

Multidimensional Scaling on Metric Measure Spaces

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is a popular technique for mapping a finite metric space into a low-dimensional Euclidean space in a way that best preserves pairwise distances. We overview the theory of classical MDS, along with its optimality properties and goodness of fit. Further, we present a notion of MDS on infinite metric measure spaces that generalizes these optimality properties. As a consequence we can study the MDS embeddings of the geodesic circle $S^1$ into $\mathbb{R}^m$ for all $m$, and ask questions about the MDS embeddings of the geodesic $n$-spheres $S^n$ into $\mathbb{R}^m$. Finally, we address questions on convergence of MDS. For instance, if a sequence of metric measure spaces converges to a fixed metric measure space $X$, then in what sense do the MDS embeddings of these spaces converge to the MDS embedding of $X$?

math.ST↗

arXiv2019

A fractal dimension for measures via persistent homology

We use persistent homology in order to define a family of fractal dimensions, denoted $\mathrm{dim}_{\mathrm{PH}}^i(μ)$ for each homological dimension $i\ge 0$, assigned to a probability measure $μ$ on a metric space. The case of $0$-dimensional homology ($i=0$) relates to work by Michael J Steele (1988) studying the total length of a minimal spanning tree on a random sampling of points. Indeed, if $μ$ is supported on a compact subset of Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^m$ for $m\ge2$, then Steele's work implies that $\mathrm{dim}_{\mathrm{PH}}^0(μ)=m$ if the absolutely continuous part of $μ$ has positive mass, and otherwise $\mathrm{dim}_{\mathrm{PH}}^0(μ)<m$. Experiments suggest that similar results may be true for higher-dimensional homology $0<i<m$, though this is an open question. Our fractal dimension is defined by considering a limit, as the number of points $n$ goes to infinity, of the total sum of the $i$-dimensional persistent homology interval lengths for $n$ random points selected from $μ$ in an i.i.d. fashion. To some measures $μ,$ we are able to assign a finer invariant, a curve measuring the limiting distribution of persistent homology interval lengths as the number of points goes to infinity. We prove this limiting curve exists in the case of $0$-dimensional homology when $μ$ is the uniform distribution over the unit interval, and conjecture that it exists when $μ$ is the rescaled probability measure for a compact set in Euclidean space with positive Lebesgue measure.

math.DS↗

arXiv2018

Metric reconstruction via optimal transport

Given a sample of points $X$ in a metric space $M$ and a scale $r>0$, the Vietoris-Rips simplicial complex $\mathrm{VR}(X;r)$ is a standard construction to attempt to recover $M$ from $X$ up to homotopy type. A deficiency of this approach is that $\mathrm{VR}(X;r)$ is not metrizable if it is not locally finite, and thus does not recover metric information about $M$. We attempt to remedy this shortcoming by defining a metric space thickening of $X$, which we call the \emph{Vietoris-Rips thickening} $\mathrm{VR}^m(X;r)$, via the theory of optimal transport. When $M$ is a complete Riemannian manifold, or alternatively a compact Hadamard space, we show that the the Vietoris-Rips thickening satisfies Hausmann's theorem ($\mathrm{VR}^m(M;r)\simeq M$ for $r$ sufficiently small) with a simpler proof: homotopy equivalence $\mathrm{VR}^m(M;r)\to M$ is canonically defined as a center of mass map, and its homotopy inverse is the (now continuous) inclusion map $M\hookrightarrow\mathrm{VR}^m(M;r)$. Furthermore, we describe the homotopy type of the Vietoris-Rips thickening of the $n$-sphere at the first positive scale parameter $r$ where the homotopy type changes.

math.MG↗

arXiv2018

Vietoris-Rips Complexes of Regular Polygons

Persistent homology has emerged as a novel tool for data analysis in the past two decades. However, there are still very few shapes or even manifolds whose persistent homology barcodes (say of the Vietoris-Rips complex) are fully known. Towards this direction, let $P_n$ be the boundary of a regular polygon in the plane with $n$ sides; we describe the homotopy types of Vietoris-Rips complexes of $P_n$. Indeed, when $n=(k+1)!!$ is an odd double factorial, we provide a complete characterization of the homotopy types and persistent homology of the Vietoris-Rips complexes of $P_n$ up to a scale parameter $r_n$, where $r_n$ approaches the diameter of $P_n$ as $n\to\infty$. Surprisingly, these homotopy types include spheres of all dimensions. Roughly speaking, the number of higher-dimensional spheres appearing is linked to the number of equilateral (but not necessarily equiangular) stars that can be inscribed into $P_n$. As our main tool we use the recently-developed theory of cyclic graphs and winding fractions. Furthermore, we show that the Vietoris-Rips complex of an arbitrarily dense subset of $P_n$ need not be homotopy equivalent to the Vietoris-Rips complex of $P_n$ itself, and indeed, these two complexes can have different homology groups in arbitrarily high dimensions. As an application of our results, we provide a lower bound on the Gromov-Hausdorff distance between $P_n$ and the circle.

math.MG↗

arXiv2018

Metric thickenings of Euclidean submanifolds

Given a sample $Y$ from an unknown manifold $X$ embedded in Euclidean space, it is possible to recover the homology groups of $X$ by building a Vietoris--Rips or Čech simplicial complex on top of the vertex set $Y$. However, these simplicial complexes need not inherit the metric structure of the manifold, in particular when $Y$ is infinite. Indeed, a simplicial complex is not even metrizable if it is not locally finite. We instead consider metric thickenings, called the \emph{Vietoris--Rips} and \emph{Čech thickenings}, which are equipped with the 1-Wasserstein metric in place of the simplicial complex topology. We show that for Euclidean subsets $X$ with positive reach, the thickenings satisfy metric analogues of Hausmann's theorem and the nerve lemma (the metric Vietoris--Rips and Čech thickenings of $X$ are homotopy equivalent to $X$ for scale parameters less than the reach). To our knowledge this is the first version of Hausmann's theorem for Euclidean submanifolds (as opposed to Riemannian manifolds), and our result also extends to non-manifold shapes (as not all sets of positive reach are manifolds). In contrast to Hausmann's original proof, our homotopy equivalence is a deformation retraction, is realized by canonical maps in both directions, and furthermore can be proven to be a homotopy equivalence via simple linear homotopies from the map compositions to the corresponding identity maps.

math.MG↗

arXiv2017

On Vietoris-Rips complexes of ellipses

For $X$ a metric space and $r>0$ a scale parameter, the Vietoris-Rips complex $VR_<(X;r)$ (resp. $VR_\leq(X;r)$) has $X$ as its vertex set, and a finite subset $σ\subseteq X$ as a simplex whenever the diameter of $σ$ is less than $r$ (resp. at most $r$). Though Vietoris-Rips complexes have been studied at small choices of scale by Hausmann and Latschev, they are not well-understood at larger scale parameters. In this paper we investigate the homotopy types of Vietoris-Rips complexes of ellipses $Y=\{(x,y)\in \mathbb{R}^2~|~(x/a)^2+y^2=1\}$ of small eccentricity, meaning $1<a\le\sqrt{2}$. Indeed, we show there are constants $r_1 < r_2$ such that for all $r_1 < r< r_2$, we have $VR_<(X;r)\simeq S^2$ and $VR_\leq(X;r)\simeq \bigvee^5 S^2$, though only one of the two-spheres in $VR_\leq(X;r)$ is persistent. Furthermore, we show that for any scale parameter $r_1 < r < r_2$, there are arbitrarily dense subsets of the ellipse such that the Vietoris-Rips complex of the subset is not homotopy equivalent to the Vietoris-Rips complex of the entire ellipse. As our main tool we link these homotopy types to the structure of infinite cyclic graphs.

math.GN↗

arXiv2017

Sweeping costs of planar domains

Let D be a Jordan domain in the plane. We consider a pursuit-evasion, contamination clearing, or sensor sweep problem in which the pursuer at each point in time is modeled by a continuous curve, called the sensor curve. Both time and space are continuous, and the intruders are invisible to the pursuer. Given D, what is the shortest length of a sensor curve necessary to provide a sweep of domain D, so that no continuously-moving intruder in D can avoid being hit by the curve? We define this length to be the sweeping cost of D. We provide an analytic formula for the sweeping cost of any Jordan domain in terms of the geodesic Frechet distance between two curves on the boundary of D with non-equal winding numbers. As a consequence, we show that the sweeping cost of any convex domain is equal to its width, and that a convex domain of unit area with maximal sweeping cost is the equilateral triangle.

math.GN↗

arXiv2017

The Vietoris-Rips complexes of a circle

Given a metric space X and a distance threshold r>0, the Vietoris-Rips simplicial complex has as its simplices the finite subsets of X of diameter less than r. A theorem of Jean-Claude Hausmann states that if X is a Riemannian manifold and r is sufficiently small, then the Vietoris-Rips complex is homotopy equivalent to the original manifold. Little is known about the behavior of Vietoris-Rips complexes for larger values of r, even though these complexes arise naturally in applications using persistent homology. We show that as r increases, the Vietoris-Rips complex of the circle obtains the homotopy types of the circle, the 3-sphere, the 5-sphere, the 7-sphere, ..., until finally it is contractible. As our main tool we introduce a directed graph invariant, the winding fraction, which in some sense is dual to the circular chromatic number. Using the winding fraction we classify the homotopy types of the Vietoris-Rips complex of an arbitrary (possibly infinite) subset of the circle, and we study the expected homotopy type of the Vietoris-Rips complex of a uniformly random sample from the circle. Moreover, we show that as the distance parameter increases, the ambient Cech complex of the circle also obtains the homotopy types of the circle, the 3-sphere, the 5-sphere, the 7-sphere, ..., until finally it is contractible.

math.AT↗

arXiv2016

Random cyclic dynamical systems

For X a finite subset of the circle and for 0 < r <= 1 fixed, consider the function f_r : X -> X which maps each point to the clockwise furthest element of X within angular distance less than 2 pi r. We study the discrete dynamical system on X generated by f_r, and especially its expected behavior when X is a large random set. We show that, as |X| -> infinity, the expected fraction of periodic points of f_r tends to 0 if r is irrational and to 1/q if r = p/q is rational with p and q coprime. These results are obtained via more refined statistics of f_r which we compute explicitly in terms of (generalized) Catalan numbers. The motivation for studying f_r comes from Vietoris-Rips complexes, a geometric construction used in computational topology. Our results determine how much one can expect to simplify the Vietoris-Rips complex of a random sample of the circle by removing dominated vertices.

math.CO↗

arXiv2016

Persistence Images: A Stable Vector Representation of Persistent Homology

Many datasets can be viewed as a noisy sampling of an underlying space, and tools from topological data analysis can characterize this structure for the purpose of knowledge discovery. One such tool is persistent homology, which provides a multiscale description of the homological features within a dataset. A useful representation of this homological information is a persistence diagram (PD). Efforts have been made to map PDs into spaces with additional structure valuable to machine learning tasks. We convert a PD to a finite-dimensional vector representation which we call a persistence image (PI), and prove the stability of this transformation with respect to small perturbations in the inputs. The discriminatory power of PIs is compared against existing methods, showing significant performance gains. We explore the use of PIs with vector-based machine learning tools, such as linear sparse support vector machines, which identify features containing discriminating topological information. Finally, high accuracy inference of parameter values from the dynamic output of a discrete dynamical system (the linked twist map) and a partial differential equation (the anisotropic Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation) provide a novel application of the discriminatory power of PIs.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2014

Nerve complexes of circular arcs

We show that the nerve complex of n arcs in the circle is homotopy equivalent to either a point, an odd-dimensional sphere, or a wedge sum of spheres of the same even dimension. Moreover this homotopy type can be computed in time O(n log n). For the particular case of the nerve complex of evenly-spaced arcs of the same length, we determine the dihedral group action on homology, and we relate the complex to a cyclic polytope with n vertices. We give three applications of our knowledge of the homotopy types of nerve complexes of circular arcs. First, we use the connection to cyclic polytopes to give a novel topological proof of a known upper bound on the distance between successive roots of a homogeneous trigonometric polynomial. Second, we show that the Lovasz bound on the chromatic number of a circular complete graph is either sharp or off by one. Third, we show that the Vietoris--Rips simplicial complex of n points in the circle is homotopy equivalent to either a point, an odd-dimensional sphere, or a wedge sum of spheres of the same even dimension, and furthermore this homotopy type can be computed in time O(n log n).

math.AT↗

arXiv2014

Nudged Elastic Band in Topological Data Analysis

We use the nudged elastic band method from computational chemistry to analyze high-dimensional data. Our approach is inspired by Morse theory, and as output we produce an increasing sequence of small cell complexes modeling the dense regions of the data. We test the method on data sets arising in social networks and in image processing. Furthermore, we apply the method to identify new topological structure in a data set of optical flow patches.

math.GN↗

arXiv2014

Evasion Paths in Mobile Sensor Networks

Suppose that ball-shaped sensors wander in a bounded domain. A sensor doesn't know its location but does know when it overlaps a nearby sensor. We say that an evasion path exists in this sensor network if a moving intruder can avoid detection. In "Coordinate-free coverage in sensor networks with controlled boundaries via homology", Vin deSilva and Robert Ghrist give a necessary condition, depending only on the time-varying connectivity data of the sensors, for an evasion path to exist. Using zigzag persistent homology, we provide an equivalent condition that moreover can be computed in a streaming fashion. However, no method with time-varying connectivity data as input can give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an evasion path. Indeed, we show that the existence of an evasion path depends not only on the fibrewise homotopy type of the region covered by sensors but also on its embedding in spacetime. For planar sensors that also measure weak rotation and distance information, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an evasion path.

math.AT↗