- Discrete Morse theory
-
Discrete Morse theory is a combinatorial adaptation of Morse theory defined on finite CW complexes.
Contents
Notation regarding CW complexes
Let
be a CW complex. Define the incidence function
in the following way: given two cells σ and τ in
,
equals the degree of the attaching map from the boundary of σ to τ. The boundary operator
on
is defined by
It is a defining property of boundary operators that
.
Discrete Morse functions
A Real-valued function
is a discrete Morse function if it satisfies the following two properties:
- For any cell
, the number of cells
in the boundary of σ which satisfy
is at most one.
- For any cell
, the number of cells
containing σ in their boundary which satisfy
is at most one.
It can be shown[1] that both conditions can not hold simultaneously for a fixed cell σ provided that
is a regular CW complex. In this case, each cell
can be paired with at most one exceptional cell
: either a boundary cell with larger μ value, or a co-boundary cell with smaller μ value. The cells which have no pairs, i.e., their function values are strictly higher than their boundary cells and strictly lower than their co-boundary cells are called critical cells. Thus, a discrete Morse function partitions the CW complex into three distinct cell collections:
, where:
denotes the critical cells which are unpaired,
denotes cells which are paired with boundary cells, and
denotes cells which are paired with co-boundary cells.
By construction, there is a bijection of sets between k-dimensional cells in
and the (k − 1)-dimensional cells in
, which can be denoted by
for each natural number k. It is an additional technical requirement that for each
, the degree of the attaching map from the boundary of K to its paired cell
is a unit in the underlying ring of
. For instance, over the integers
, the only allowed values are
. This technical requirement is guaranteed when one assumes that
is a regular CW complex over
.
The fundamental result of discrete Morse theory establishes that the CW complex
is isomorphic on the level of homology to a new complex
consisting of only the critical cells. The paired cells in
and
describe gradient paths between adjacent critical cells which can be used to obtain the boundary operator on
. Some details of this construction are provided in the next section.
The Morse complex
A gradient path
is a sequence of cell pairs
so that
. The index of this gradient path is defined to be the integer
. The division here makes sense because the incidence between paired cells must be
. Note that by construction, the values of the discrete Morse function μ must decrease across ρ. The path ρ is said to connect two critical cells
if
. This relationship may be expressed as
. The multiplicity of this connection is defined to be the integer
. Finally, the Morse boundary operator on the critical cells
is defined by
where the sum is taken over all gradient path connections from A to A'.
See also
- Digital Morse theory
- Stratified Morse theory
- Piece-wise linear Morse theory
- Shape analysis
- Topological combinatorics
- Discrete differential geometry
References
- ^ Forman, Robin: Morse Theory for Cell Complexes, Lemma 2.5
- Robin Forman (2002) A User's Guide to Discrete Morse Theory, Séminare Lotharinen de Combinatore 48
- Dmitry Kozlov (2007). Combinatorial Algebraic Topology. Springer. ISBN 978-3540719618.
- Jakob Jonsson (2007). Simplicial Complexes of Graphs. Springer. ISBN 978-3540758587.
- Peter Orlik, Volkmar Welker (2007). Algebraic Combinatorics: Lectures at a Summer School In Nordfjordeid. Springer. ISBN 978-3540683759.
Categories:- Combinatorics
- Topology
- Mathematics stubs
- For any cell
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