On $\ell_p$-Vietoris-Rips complexes

Abstract

We study the concepts of the $\ell_p$-Vietoris-Rips simplicial set and the $\ell_p$-Vietoris-Rips complex of a metric space, where $1\leq p \leq \infty.$ This theory unifies two established theories: for $p=\infty,$ this is the classical theory of Vietoris-Rips complexes, and for $p=1,$ this corresponds to the blurred magnitude homology theory. We prove several results that are known for the Vietoris-Rips complex in the general case: (1) we prove a stability theorem for the corresponding version of the persistent homology; (2) we show that, for a compact Riemannian manifold and a sufficiently small scale parameter, all the "$\ell_p$-Vietoris-Rips spaces" are homotopy equivalent to the manifold; (3) we demonstrate that the $\ell_p$-Vietoris-Rips spaces are invariant (up to homotopy) under taking the metric completion. Additionally, we show that the limit of the homology groups of the $\ell_p$-Vietoris-Rips spaces, as the scale parameter tends to zero, does not depend on $p$; and that the homology groups of the $\ell_p$-Vietoris-Rips spaces commute with filtered colimits of metric spaces.