Distributed computation of low-dimensional cup products (Q721482)

The authors describe a distributed algorithm for computing the cup product \(\cup : H^1(X,\mathbb{Z}) \times H^1(X,\mathbb{Z}) \to H^2(X,\mathbb{Z})\) on the cohomology of a finite regular CW-space. A serial implementation of the algorithm is illustrated in two applied topological settings: (i) \(3\)-dimensional digital images; (ii) topological data analysis of a finite sample of points from a metric space. For the second of these illustrations the authors introduce a cohomological enrichment of the mapper clustering procedure which may be of independent interest.