Stratifying the space of barcodes using Coxeter complexes (Q6175715)

A barcode with \(n\) bars is a multiset of \(n\) pairs \((birth, death) \in \mathbb{R}^2\) such that \(birth < death\). The definition originated in topological data analysis (see [\textit{R. Ghrist}, Bull. Am. Math. Soc., New Ser. 45, No. 1, 61--75 (2008; Zbl 1391.55005)]) and is widely used. Each barcode with pairwise distinct values of births and deaths has an associated permutation, which assigns to an index of a bar with the ascending order by births an index of this bar with the ascending order by deaths [\textit{L. Kanari} et al., Algorithms 13, No. 12, Paper No. 335, 27 p. (2020; \url{doi:10.3390/a13120335})]. In the paper, the authors use this observation to achieve three goals: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] to provide the space \(\mathcal{B}_n\) of barcodes with a coordinate system; \item[2.] to stratify \(\mathcal{B}_n\); \item[3.] to provide \(\mathcal{B}_n\) with a metric and embed it isometrically to \(\mathbb{R}^{2n}/S_n\) with \(S_n\) acting by simultaneous permutations in the first \(n\) and the second \(n\) coordinates. \end{itemize} The authors operate with an embedding \(\phi:\mathcal{B}_n \to \mathbb{R}^{2n}/S_n\) which maps births to the first \(n\) coordinates and deaths to the second \(n\) coordinates (Remark 4.1). The cornerstone construction of the paper is the construction of the coordinates on \(\mathbb{R}^n\) (Section 3). The coordinates of the point \(p\) are the angular component of the spherical coordinates on the sphere \(S^{n-2}\) in \(\langle (1,1,\ldots)\rangle^{\bot}\), the coordinate of its center on the line \(\langle(1,1,\ldots)\rangle\), namely the average of Euclidean coordinates of \(p\), and the radius of the sphere, namely the standard deviation of Euclidean coordinates of \(p\). This construction leads to the statement that a barcode is uniquely determined by its average birth, average death, the birth standard deviation, the death standard deviation, and the orbit \(S_n \cdot (b_0,d_0) \in (S^{n-2} \times S^{n-2})/S_n\) of specified action of \(S_n\) (Theorem 4.3). The \(S^{n-2}\) is triangulated by the Coxeter complex of \(S_n\). The simplicial definition of the Coxeter complex together with the given coordinates lead to the stratification of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) by cosets of subgroups of \(S_n\), generated by subsets of the standard set of generators of \(S_n\), with reverse inclusion. The authors use it to obtain the stratification of \(\mathcal{B}_n\) by double cosets of these subgroups (Theorem 4.8). In Section 5, the authors provide \(\mathcal{B}_n\) with a metric similar to the bottleneck distance and prove that \(\phi\) is an isometric embedding (Proposition 5.2).