Universality of persistence diagrams and the bottleneck and Wasserstein distances (Q2144461)

Universality of different relevant metrics in topological data analysis refers to the discriminating power of the metrics: a (pseudo)metric \(d\) is universal if for any other metric \(d'\), \(d'(X,Y) \leq d(X,Y)\) for any pair of objects \(X\) and \(Y\); the metrics come with some additional properties, but this is the general form of universality. Universality thus means that a metric is the most discriminating since for any other metric the distances between objects are smaller. For example, the interleaving distance between persistence modules is universal [\textit{M. Lesnick}, Found. Comput. Math. 15, No. 3, 613--650 (2015; Zbl 1335.55006)]. The paper of Bubenik and Elchesen establishes the universality of \(p\)-Wasserstein metrics \(W_p\) for persistence diagrams. The main results are proved in the general setting of metric pairs \((X,d,A),\) where \((X,d)\) is a metric space and \(A \subset X\). For example, the relevant metric pair for persistence diagrams is \((\{(x,y) \in \mathbb{R}^2 \ | \ x \leq y\},d,\Delta),\) where \(d\) is the metric induced by a standard \(q\)-norm and \(\Delta\) is the diagonal \(x=y\). The examples of metric pairs subsume both bottleneck distance and Wasserstein distances. Of interest is the categorical approach in the paper, which might appeal to a reader interested in categorifications of persistence diagrams and their associated metric questions. For any set \(X\), the free commutative monoid is the set of all finite formal sums of elements of \(X\) with addition of formal sums as the monoid operation. Given a pair \((X,A)\), e.g. a metric pair, \(D(X,A)\) is the quotient monoid \(D(X)/D(A)\); \(D(X,A)\) is then the commutative monoid of persistence diagrams on \((X,A)\). The universality theorem now says that given a metric pair \((X,d,A)\), the commutative metric monoid associated to \((X,d,A)\) and given by the quadruple \((D(X,A),W_p,+,0)\), is universal. That is, for any commutative metric monoid \((N,\rho,+,0)\) and 1-Lipschitz map \(\phi \colon (X,d,A) \rightarrow (N,\rho,0)\) there is a unique 1-Lipschitz monoid homomorphism \(\tilde{\phi} \colon (D(X,A),W_p,+,0) \rightarrow (N,\rho,+,0)\) fitting into an appropriate universality diagram.