The space of barcode bases for persistence modules (Q6102898)

Persistent homology has been gaining traction as a method for applied algebraic topology in recent decades. One core question the field has been exploring is the complete invariant called \textit{barcodes} that was introduced early on: indecomposable modules in the representation theory underlying persistent homology can be completely characterised by the start- and end-value of the parameter that is allowed to vary in the persistent homology constructions. Hence a decomposition of a given persistence module is fully described by a (multi-)set of ordered pairs of parameter values. This paper studies the entirety of the space of barcode bases for a given persistence module, and transformations for performing basis changes within this space. The authors extract a description of the appropriate symmetry groups (products of general linear groups) and algorithms for putting an arbitrary set of (appropriate) matrices on a barcode representation form. The authors also leverage their understanding of this space of bases to push further on our understanding of maps between persistence modules. This has been studied before, in preprints [\textit{P. Skraba} and \textit{M. Vejdemo-Johansson}, ``Persistence modules: algebra and algorithms'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1302.2015}] and in papers on algebraic approaches to the stability of persistent homology [\textit{U. Bauer} and \textit{M. Lesnick}, SoCG 2014, 355--364 (2014; Zbl 1395.68289); J. Comput. Geom. 6, No. 2, 162--191 (2015; Zbl 1405.68398)] where kernels and images of maps between persistence modules were studied in terms of matching these \textit{bars} between the decompositions of the source and target persistence modules. In this paper, the authors show that as long as no bar fully contains (as an interval of real numbers) another bar, the maps are fully determined by such matchings of bars, and when such contained bars are present, they characterize the ways in which the corresponding maps end up ambiguously defined.