English

Level-sets persistence and sheaf theory

Algebraic Topology 2019-07-24 v1 Computational Geometry

Abstract

In this paper we provide an explicit connection between level-sets persistence and derived sheaf theory over the real line. In particular we construct a functor from 2-parameter persistence modules to sheaves over R\mathbb{R}, as well as a functor in the other direction. We also observe that the 2-parameter persistence modules arising from the level sets of Morse functions carry extra structure that we call a Mayer-Vietoris system. We prove classification, barcode decomposition, and stability theorems for these Mayer-Vietoris systems, and we show that the aforementioned functors establish a pseudo-isometric equivalence of categories between derived constructible sheaves with the convolution or (derived) bottleneck distance and the interleaving distance of strictly pointwise finite-dimensional Mayer-Vietoris systems. Ultimately, our results provide a functorial equivalence between level-sets persistence and derived pushforward for continuous real-valued functions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.09759,
  title  = {Level-sets persistence and sheaf theory},
  author = {Nicolas Berkouk and Grégory Ginot and Steve Oudot},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.09759},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:28:04.624Z