Quantitative homotopy theory in topological data analysis (Q2441422)

An effective way of exploring a topological space \(Y\) is to study the homotopy type of the space of maps from a fixed space \(X\) to it. This paper is dedicated to the development of a combinatorial version of this idea: The \textit{contiguity complex}. Given simplicial complexes \(X\) and \(Y\), simplicial maps \(f_0, \ldots, f_n: X\to Y\) are contiguous if, for each simplex of \(X\), its vertices are transformed by \(f_0, \ldots, f_n\) into vertices of a same simplex of \(Y\). The authors approximate the space of maps from \(|X|\) to \(|Y|\) with the complex whose vertices are simplicial maps and whose simplices are sets of mutually contiguous maps (all is much in the spirit of the Simplicial Approximation Theorem); Theorem 1.2 makes this idea formal in terms of homotopy equivalence and of subdivisions of \(X\). The paper is extremely well detailed and self-contained. Of particular interest are Sections 5 and 6 on products. The last two sections are application oriented. Of course the complete computation of the contiguity complex is intractable, even with small complexes; Section 9 offers an algorithm for its simplification. It also gives an example of an estimate of the contiguity classes of maps from \(S^1\) (triangulated with a varying number of vertices) to two polyhedra with isomorphic homologies; the difference in numbers gives a sort of experimental evidence of a different homotopy type. Section 10 is a promising link to persistence.