Vietoris-Rips complexes of planar point sets

Abstract: Fix a finite set of points in Euclidean

n

-space

e u c^{n}

, thought of as a point-cloud sampling of a certain domain

D s u b s e t e u c^{n}

. The Rips complex is a combinatorial simplicial complex based on proximity of neighbors that serves as an easily-computed but high-dimensional approximation to the homotopy type of

D

. There is a natural ``shadow projection map from the Rips complex to $e u c^{n}$ that has as its image a more accurate $n$ -dimensional approximation to the homotopy type of $D$ . We demonstrate that this projection map is 1-connected for the planar case $n = 2$ . That is, for planar domains, the Rips complex accurately captures connectivity and fundamental group data. This implies that the fundamental group of a Rips complex for a planar point set is a free group. We show that, in contrast, introducing even a small amount of uncertainty in proximity detection leads to `quasi'-Rips complexes with nearly arbitrary fundamental groups. This topological noise can be mitigated by examining a pair of quasi-Rips complexes and using ideas from persistent topology. Finally, we show that the projection map does not preserve higher-order topological data for planar sets, nor does it preserve fundamental group data for point sets in dimension larger than three.

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