English

A continuum of K\"unneth theorems for persistence modules

Algebraic Topology 2026-04-23 v1 Computational Geometry Category Theory

Abstract

We develop new aspects of the homological algebra theory for persistence modules, in both the one-parameter and multi-parameter settings. For a poset PP and an order preserving map φ:P×PP\varphi:P\times P\to P, we introduce a novel tensor product of persistence modules indexed by PP, φ\otimes_{\varphi}. We prove that each φ\otimes_{\varphi} has a right adjoint, Homφ\mathbf{Hom}^{\varphi}, the internal hom of persistence modules that also depends on φ\varphi. We prove that every φ\otimes_{\varphi} yields a K\"unneth short exact sequence of chain complexes of persistence modules. Dually, the Homφ\mathbf{Hom}^{\varphi} also has an associated K\"unneth short exact sequence in cohomology. As special cases both of these short exact sequences yield Universal Coefficient Theorems. We show how to apply these to chain complexes of persistence modules arising from filtered CW complexes. For the special case of P=R+P=\mathbb{R}_+, the pp-quasinorms for each p(0,]p\in (0,\infty] yield a distinct cp\otimes_{\ell^p_c} and its adjoint Homcp\mathbf{Hom}^{\ell^p_c}. We compute their derived functors, Torcp\mathbf{Tor}^{\ell^p_c} and Extcp\mathbf{Ext}_{\ell^p_c} explicitly for interval modules. We show that the Universal Coefficient Theorem developed can be used to compute persistent Borel-Moore homology of a filtration of non-compact spaces. Finally, we show that for every p[1,]p\in [1,\infty] the associated K\"unneth short exact sequence can be used to significantly speed up and approximate persistent homology computations in a product metric space (X×Y,dp)(X\times Y,d^p) with the distance dp((x,y),(x,y))=dX(x,x),dY(y,y)pd^p((x,y),(x',y'))=||d_X(x,x'),d_Y(y,y')||_p.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.20004,
  title  = {A continuum of K\"unneth theorems for persistence modules},
  author = {Nikola Milićević},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.20004},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

52 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:29:24.235Z