Metric thickenings of Euclidean submanifolds

Abstract

Given a sample Y from an unknown manifold X embedded in Euclidean space, it is possible to recover the homology groups of X by building a Vietoris–Rips or Čech simplicial complex on top of the vertex set Y. However, these simplicial complexes need not inherit the metric structure of the manifold, in particular when Y is infinite. Indeed, a simplicial complex is not even metrizable if it is not locally finite. We instead consider metric thickenings, called the Vietoris–Rips and Čech thickenings, which are equipped with the 1-Wasserstein metric in place of the simplicial complex topology. We show that for Euclidean subsets X with positive reach, the thickenings satisfy metric analogues of Hausmann's theorem and the nerve lemma (the metric Vietoris–Rips and Čech thickenings of X are homotopy equivalent to X for scale parameters less than the reach). To our knowledge this is the first version of Hausmann's theorem for Vietoris–Rips constructions on entire Euclidean submanifolds (as opposed to Riemannian manifolds), and our result also extends to non-manifold shapes (as not all sets of positive reach are manifolds). In contrast to Hausmann's original proof, our homotopy equivalence is a deformation retraction, is realized by canonical maps in both directions, and furthermore can be proven to be a homotopy equivalence via simple linear homotopies from the map compositions to the corresponding identity maps.