Topological spaces - such as classifying spaces, configuration spaces and spacetimes - often admit extra temporal structure. Qualitative invariants on such directed spaces often are more informative yet more difficult to calculate than classical homotopy invariants on underlying spaces because directed spaces rarely decompose as homotopy colimits of simpler directed spaces. Directed spaces often arise as geometric realizations of simplicial sets and cubical sets equipped with temporal structure encoding the orientations of simplices and 1-cubes. In an attempt to develop calculational tools for directed homotopy theory, we prove appropriate simplicial and cubical approximation theorems. We consequently show that geometric realization induces an equivalence between weak homotopy diagram categories of cubical sets and directed spaces and that its right adjoint satisfies an excision theorem. Along the way, we give criteria for two different homotopy relations on directed maps in the literature to coincide.
The spaces of directed paths on the geometric realizations of pre-cubical sets, called also $\square$--sets, can be interpreted as the spaces of possible executions of Higher Dimensional Automata, which are models for concurrent computations. In this paper we construct, for a sufficiently good pre-cubical set $K$, a CW-complex $W(K)_v^w$ that is homotopy equivalent to the space of directed paths between given vertices $v$, $w$ of $K$. This construction is functorial with respect to $K$, and minimal among all functorial constructions. Furthermore, explicit formulas for incidence numbers of the …
For a given pre-cubical set ($\square$--set) $K$ with two distinguished vertices $\bO$, $\bI$, we prove that the space $\vP(K)_\bO^\bI$ of d-paths on the geometric realization of $K$ with source $\bO$ and target $\bI$ is homotopy equivalent to its subspace $\vP^t(K)_\bO^\bI$ of tame d-paths. When $K$ is the underlying $\square$--set of a Higher Dimensional Automaton $A$, tame d-paths on $K$ represent step executions of $A$. Then, we define the cube chain category of $K$ and prove that its nerve is weakly homotopy equivalent to $\vP(K)_\bO^\bI$.
In the directed setting, the spaces of directed paths between fixed initial and terminal points are the defining feature for distinguishing different directed spaces. The simplest case is when the space of directed paths is homotopy equivalent to that of a single path; we call this the trivial space of directed paths. Directed spaces that are topologically trivial may have non-trivial spaces of directed paths, which means that information is lost when the direction of these topological spaces is ignored. We define a notion of directed collapsibility in the setting of a directed Euclidean cubic…
After two papers on weak cubical categories and {\it collarable} cospans, respectively, we put things together and construct a {\it weak} cubical category of cubical {\it collared} cospans of topological spaces. We also build a second structure, called a {\it quasi} cubical category, formed of arbitrary cubical cospans concatenated by homotopy pushouts. This structure, simpler but weaker, has {\it lax} identities. It contains a similar framework for cobordisms of manifolds with corners and could therefore be the basis to extend the study of TQFT's of Part II to higher cubical degree.
The present paper is a continuation of author's paper arXiv:1909.00940 [math.AT] devoted to the lemmas of Alexander and Sperner, but is independent from it. We begin by a step back from Alexander and Sperner to Lebesgue work on the invariance of the dimension. In contrast with almost everybody else, Lebesgue worked with cubes rather than with simplices. His methods were developed by Hurewicz and Lusternik-Schnirelmann and then forgotten. In the present paper these methods are recast in the language of cubical chains and cochains. After this, we present a new approach to Lebesgue and Lusternik-…
Let $K$ be an arbitrary semi-cubical set that can be embedded in a standard cube. Using Discrete Morse Theory, we construct a CW-complex that is homotopy equivalent to the space $\vec{P}(K)_v^w$ of directed paths between two given vertices $v,w$ of $K$. In many cases, this construction is minimal: the cells of the constructed CW-complex are in 1--1 correspondence with the generators of the homology of $\vec{P}(K)_v^w$.
In this paper, we introduce the notions of stable future, past and total component systems on a directed space with no loops. Then, we associate the stable component category to a stable (future, past or total) component system. Stable component categories are enriched in some monoidal category, eg. the homotopy category of spaces, and carry information about the spaces of directed paths between particular points. It is shown that the geometric realizations of finite pre-cubical sets with no loops admit the unique minimal stable (future/past/total) component systems. These constructions provid…
We study a natural model of random 2-dimensional cubical complex which is a subcomplex of an n-dimensional cube, and where every possible square $2$-face is included independently with probability p. Our main result is to exhibit a sharp threshold p=1/2 for homology vanishing as $n \to \infty$. This is a 2-dimensional analogue of the Burtin and Erdős-Spencer theorems characterizing the connectivity threshold for random cubical graphs. Our main result can also be seen as a cubical counterpart to the Linial--Meshulam theorem for random 2-dimensional simplicial complexes. However, the models exhi…
The purpose of this article is to study directed collapsibility of directed Euclidean cubical complexes. One application of this is in the nontrivial task of verifying the execution of concurrent programs. The classical definition of collapsibility involves certain conditions on a pair of cubes of the complex. The direction of the space can be taken into account by requiring that the past links of vertices remain homotopy equivalent after collapsing. We call this type of collapse a link-preserving directed collapse. In this paper, we give combinatorially equivalent conditions for preserving th…
We want to investigate 'spaces' where paths have a 'weight', or 'cost', expressing length, duration, price, energy, etc. The weight function is not assumed to be invariant up to path-reversion. Thus, 'weighted algebraic topology' can be developed as an enriched version of directed algebraic topology, where illicit paths are penalised with an infinite cost, and the licit ones are measured. Its algebraic counterpart will be 'weighted algebraic structures', equipped with a sort of directed seminorm. In the fundamental weighted category of a generalised metric space, introduced here, each homotopy…
We apply the theory of directed topology developed by Grandis [9, 10] to the study of stratified spaces by describing several ways in which a stratification or a stratification with orientations on the strata can be used to produce a related directed space structure. This description provides a setting for the constructions of state-sum TQFTs with defects of [5, 8], which we extend to a similar construction of a Dijkgraaf- Witten type TQFT in the case where the defects (lower dimensional strata) are not sources or targets, but sources on one side and targets on the other, according to an orien…
ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；Yale University（耶鲁大学）；Mila（米拉研究所）
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a crucial technology for gaining insights into cognitive processes in humans. Data amassed from fMRI measurements result in volumetric data sets that vary over time. However, analysing such data presents a challenge due to the large degree of noise and person-to-person variation in how information is represented in the brain. To address this challenge, we present a novel topological approach that encodes each time point in an fMRI data set as a persistence diagram of topological features, i.e. high-dimensional voids present in the data. This repr…
We study the topology of a random cubical complex associated to Bernoulli site percolation on a cubical grid. We begin by establishing a limit law for homotopy types. More precisely, looking within an expanding window, we define a sequence of normalized counting measures (counting connected components according to homotopy type), and we show that this sequence of random probability measures converges in probability to a deterministic probability measure. We then investigate the dependence of the limiting homotopy measure on the coloring probability $p$, and our results show a qualitative chang…
Directed Algebraic Topology is beginning to emerge from various applications. The basic structure we shall use for such a theory, a 'd-space', is a topological space equipped with a family of 'directed paths', closed under some operations. This allows for 'directed homotopies', generally non reversible, represented by a cylinder and cocylinder functors. The existence of 'pastings' (colimits) yields a geometric realisation of cubical sets as d-spaces, together with homotopy constructs which will be developed in a sequel. Here, the 'fundamental category' of a d-space is introduced and a 'Seifert…
The state space of a machine admits the structure of time. For example, the geometric realization of a precubical set, a generalization of an unlabeled asynchronous transition system, admits a "local preorder" encoding control flow. In the case where time does not loop, the "locally preordered" state space splits into causally distinct components. The set of such components often gives a computable invariant of machine behavior. In the general case, no such meaningful partition could exist. However, as we show in this note, the locally preordered geometric realization of a precubical set admit…
This paper constructs an h-model structure for diagrams of streams, locally preordered spaces. Along the way, the paper extends some classical characterizations of Hurewicz fibrations and closed Hurewicz cofibrations. The usual characterization of classical closed Hurewicz cofibrations as inclusions of neighborhood deformation retracts extends. A characterization of classical Hurewicz fibrations as algebras over a pointed Moore cocylinder endofunctor also extends. An immediate consequence is a long exact sequence for directed homotopy monoids, with applications to safety verifications for data…
We generalize some of the fundamental results of algebraic topology from topological spaces to Čech's closure spaces, also known as pretopological spaces. Using simplicial sets and cubical sets with connections, we define three distinct singular (relative) simplicial and six distinct singular (relative) cubical (co)homology groups of closure spaces. Using acyclic models we show that the three simplicial groups have isomorphic cubical analogues among the six cubical groups. Thus, we obtain a total of six distinct singular (co)homology groups of closure spaces. Each of these is shown to have a c…
In this paper we prove results relating to two homotopy relations and four homology theories developed in the topology of digital images. We introduce a new type of homotopy relation for digitally continuous functions which we call "strong homotopy." Both digital homotopy and strong homotopy are natural digitizations of classical topological homotopy: the difference between them is analogous to the difference between digital 4-adjacency and 8-adjacency in the plane. We also consider four different digital homology theories: a simplicial homology theory by Arslan et al which is the homology of …
We introduce new algebro-topological invariants of directed networks, based on the topological construction of the directed clique complex. The shape of the underlying directed graph is encoded in a way that can be studied mathematically to obtain network invariants such as the Euler characteristic and the Betti numbers. Two different cases illustrate the application of the Euler characteristic. We investigate how the evolution of a Boolean recurrent artificial neural network is influenced by its topology in a dynamics involving pruning and strengthening of the connections, and to show that th…
The paper surveys some new results and open problems connected with such fundamental combinatorial concepts as polytopes, simplicial complexes, cubical complexes, and subspace arrangements. Particular attention is paid to the case of simplicial and cubical subdivisions of manifolds and, especially, spheres. We describe important constructions which allow to study all these combinatorial objects by means of methods of commutative and homological algebra. The proposed approach to combinatorial problems relies on the theory of moment-angle complexes, currently being developed by the authors. The …
Higher Dimensional Automata (HDA) are higher dimensional relatives to transition systems in concurrency theory taking into account to which degree various actions commute. Mathematically, they take the form of labelled cubical complexes. It is important to know, and challenging from a geometric/topological perspective, whether the space of directed paths (executions in the model) between two vertices (states) is connected; more generally, to estimate higher connectedness of these path spaces. This paper presents an approach for such an estimation for particularly simple HDA modelling the acces…
In this paper, we present two types of Lefschetz numbers in the topology of digital images. Namely, the simplicial Lefschetz number $L(f)$ and the cubical Lefschetz number $\bar L(f)$. We show that $L(f)$ is a strong homotopy invariant and has an approximate fixed point theorem. On the other hand, we establish that $\bar L(f)$ is a homotopy invariant and has an $n$-approximate fixed point result. In essence, this means that the fixed point result for $L(f)$ is better than that for $\bar L(f)$ while the homotopy invariance of $\bar L(f)$ is better than that of $L(f)$. Unlike in classical topolo…
With a view toward studying the homotopy type of spaces of Boolean formulae, we introduce a simplicial complex, called the theta complex, associated to any hypergraph, which is the Alexander dual of the more well-known independence complex. In particular, the set of satisfiable formulae in k-conjunctive normal form with less than or equal to n variables has the homotopy type of Theta(Cube(n,n-k)), where Cube(n,n-k) is a hypergraph associated to the (n-k)-skeleton of an n-cube. We make partial progress in calculating the homotopy type of theta for these cubical hypergraphs, and we also give cal…
Cattani-Sassone's notion of higher dimensional transition system is interpreted as a small-orthogonality class of a locally finitely presentable topological category of weak higher dimensional transition systems. In particular, the higher dimensional transition system associated with the labelled n-cube turns out to be the free higher dimensional transition system generated by one n-dimensional transition. As a first application of this construction, it is proved that a localization of the category of higher dimensional transition systems is equivalent to a locally finitely presentable reflect…
In a previous paper [22] the author studied the directed weak covering homotopy property (dWCHP)and directed weak fibrations in the category dTop of directed spaces in the sense of M. Grandis [12], [13], [14]. This type of maps extend to the category dTop the well known Dold's (or weak)fibrations [6]. In this paper the transition from local to global of the dFHE (directed fiber homotopy equivalence) and the dWCHP are studied by proving two Dold type theorems and respectively a tom Dieck-Kamps-Puppe type theorem [3]. Some new notions of directed topology are defined: d-halo, d-SEP, d-numerable …
We explore pseudometrics for directed graphs in order to better understand their topological properties. The directed flag complex associated to a directed graph provides a useful bridge between network science and topology. Indeed, it has often been observed that phenomena exhibited by real-world networks reflect the topology of their flag complexes, as measured, for example, by Betti numbers or simplex counts. As it is often computationally expensive (or even unfeasible) to determine such topological features exactly, it would be extremely valuable to have pseudometrics on the set of directe…
Directed graphs are ubiquitous models for networks, and topological spaces they generate, such as the directed flag complex, have become useful objects in applied topology. The simplices are formed from directed cliques. We extend Atkin's theory of $q$-connectivity to the case of directed simplices. This results in a preorder where simplices are related by sequences of simplices that share a $q$-face with respect to directions specified by chosen face maps. We leverage the Alexandroff equivalence between preorders and topological spaces to introduce a new class of topological spaces for direct…
