Meta-Diagrams for 2-Parameter Persistence

Abstract

We first introduce the notion of meta-rank for a 2-parameter persistence module, an invariant that captures the information behind images of morphisms between 1D slices of the module. We then define the meta-diagram of a 2-parameter persistence module to be the Möbius inversion of the meta-rank, resulting in a function that takes values from signed 1-parameter persistence modules. We show that the meta-rank and meta-diagram contain information equivalent to the rank invariant and the signed barcode. This equivalence leads to computational benefits, as we introduce an algorithm for computing the meta-rank and meta-diagram of a 2-parameter module M indexed by a bifiltration of n simplices in O(n 3 ) time. This implies an improvement upon the existing algorithm for computing the signed barcode, which has O(n 4 ) runtime. This also allows us to improve the existing upper bound on the number of rectangles in the rank decomposition of M from O(n 4 ) to O(n 3 ). In addition, we define notions of erosion distance between meta-ranks and between meta-diagrams, and show that under these distances, meta-ranks and meta-diagrams are stable with respect to the interleaving distance. Lastly, the meta-diagram can be visualized in an intuitive fashion as a persistence diagram of diagrams, which generalizes the well-understood persistence diagram in the 1-parameter setting.