We take up the study, initiated by Fred Cohen, of the Cartan--Leray spectral sequence for Euclidean configuration spaces, establishing a decomposition as a direct sum of atomic spectral sequences. As an immediate consequence, we recover a difficult theorem of Arone--Mahowald on the vanishing of Goodwillie derivatives of the identity.

We prove that, in every degree, the rational Spin bordism classes represented by manifolds admitting metrics with positive Ricci curvature span exactly the kernel of the $\hat A$-genus. More precisely, for \[ R=Ω_*^{Spin}\otimes\mathbb{Q},\qquad J=\ker(\hat A:R\longrightarrow\mathbb{Q}[u]),\] the $\mathbb{Q}$-span of bordism classes of Ricci-positive Spin manifolds equals $J$ in each degree. This answers, in the differentiable rational Spin category, a question about rational bordism obstructions to positive Ricci curvature which was raised in the context of complex elliptic genera. The proof uses smooth complete intersections of an odd number $\ell$ of quadrics \[ Y_{m,\ell}\subset \mathbb{CP}^{2m+\ell}, \qquad \ell=1,\, 3,\, \ldots,\, 2m-1. \] These manifolds have real dimension $4m$, are Spin and Fano, and therefore admit metrics with positive Ricci curvature. A first-order thickening of the $\hat A$-genus induces $m-1$ linear functionals on $(J/J^2)_{4m}$. Their values on the classes $[Y_{m,\ell}]$ are governed by polynomials $P_{m,q}(\ell)$ of strictly increasing degrees $q+1=1$, $2$, $\ldots$, $m-1$. This gives full rank by a polynomial-interpolation argument.

Projective representations arise naturally in physics and representation theory, and determining whether they can be linearized has been a fundamental problem. In this work, we study the analogous problem for quantum cellular automata (QCA) representations, which incorporate locality constraints imposed by a metric space $X$. Over an arbitrary field $\mathbb{F}$, we develop an obstruction theory for the linearization of QCA representations, using the algebraic $K$-theory spectrum of QCA constructed in previous work of the authors. The resulting obstructions are governed by the homotopy type of the QCA spaces, from which we extract universal obstruction classes to linearization. In the complex algebraic and unitary case, we also fully compute the homotopy types of the QCA spaces over a point, a line, and a plane.

Real-time process monitoring requires methods that extract actionable information from high-dimensional time-series data. In this work, we present a new approach for process monitoring that combines tools of topological data analysis (TDA) and machine learning. In the proposed approach, we represent multivariate time-series data as manifolds and use topological descriptors to summarize the structure of such data; we then use a neural ordinary differential equation to learn the dynamic evolution of the topological structure of the system. Using real data from an industrial process, we show that this trajectory-based event detection approach is effective at detecting diverse types of events. We contrast this approach against reconstruction-based approaches such as principal component analysis and autoencoders and against a trajectory-based approach that uses Koopman autoencoders.

A c-direct category is a small category equipped with an ordinal degree function such that every morphism is level or degree-raising. Every c-direct category is c-Reedy. The c-Reedy model structure on any functor category from a c-direct category to a model category coincides with the projective model structure. In this framework, a realization functor is a colimit-preserving functor satisfying some mild homotopical conditions from the category of presheaves on a c-direct category with cofibrant representables to a model category. We prove that any two such realization functors are weakly equivalent on cofibrant presheaves. For categories of cubes, we prove that thick categories have cofibrant representables. As an application, we introduce the $\varepsilon$-branching space of an $\mathcal A$-set for any thick category of cubes $\mathcal A$. It is obtained as a coend over a c-direct category with cofibrant representables constructed from $\mathcal A$. We prove that, on free $\mathcal A$-sets generated by precubical sets, this new definition coincides with the earlier one. We prove that, for cofibrant $\mathcal A$-sets, the resulting space is independent of $\varepsilon$ up to homotopy.

The theory of fiber bundles over small categories is developed, viewing them as locally constant functors to the category of small categories. The Grothendieck construction yields a total category equipped with a projection that is a bifibration. We show that, up to natural isomorphism, every such bundle admits a constant fiber, and that the monodromy gives a representation of the fundamental groupoid in the automorphism group of the fiber, which allows the classification of fiber bundles up to isomorphism. The gauge group of the bundle is proved to be isomorphic to the centralizer of the monodromy subgroup. We then give a precise analysis of sections and (lax) fixed points of the fiber bundle. Beat points for functors are introduced, and it is proved that every fiber bundle with some finiteness and acyclic conditions admits a minimal core, using a rigidity lemma for finite acyclic categories. These concepts are illustrated with explicit examples.

We introduce the degree filtration on the discrete cubical chain complex of a graph, defined in terms of the maximal injective dimension of the facets of singular $n$-cubes, and study the degree spectral sequence which arises from this filtration. This spectral sequence interpolates between the discrete cubical homology of a graph $H_n(G)$ and the injective homology $H_n^{inj}(G)$, a variant of the discrete cubical homology based on injective singular cubes. Building on the work of Babson et al. we introduce the combinatorial condition of quasimonophobicity on graphs, and show quasimonophobicity implies both the vanishing of the degree spectral sequence in certain bidegrees, and implies $H_n^{inj}(G)$ is isomorphic to the homology of the CW complex obtained by ``filling in'' subcubes of the graph. These results are applied to compute $H_2(G_n^{sph})$ for the Greene sphere graphs $G^{sph}_n$.

We show that the realization theorem of Fernández de Bobadilla, which identifies the Milnor fiber of a weighted-homogeneous polynomial with the complement of a germ of analytic set, can be combined with the systematic Massey product constructions of Grbić-Linton for moment-angle complexes $\mathcal{Z}_K = \mathcal{Z}_K(D^2, S^1)$ to produce weighted-homogeneous polynomials whose Milnor fibers are arbitrarily highly connected and non-formal. The original application of this strategy, due to Fernández de Bobadilla, used the Denham-Suciu classification of lowest-degree triple Massey products and yielded only 2-connected non-formal Milnor fibers. The Grbić-Linton framework, which constructs non-trivial $n$-fold Massey products in $H^*(\mathcal{Z}_K;\mathbb{Z})$ for arbitrary $n$ and in arbitrary cohomological degrees, removes this connectivity restriction entirely.

We develop a geometric approach to the regularized double shuffle relations for multiple zeta values, based on convolution of perverse sheaves on $\mathbb{C}^*$ and inspired by the approach of Deligne and Terasoma. We introduce semi-holonomy isomorphisms associated with pro-unipotent paths and show that their compatibility with multiplicative convolution is equivalent to a condition on the pro-unipotent fundamental group, the homological pentagon equation. We prove that this condition is equivalent to the regularized double shuffle relations, yielding a geometric proof that the pentagon equation implies these relations. The approach is purely topological and avoids Hodge-theoretic and Tannakian methods.

A persistence diagram is a finite multiset of birth-death pairs representing the lifetimes of topological features across a filtration. Existing functional and kernel representations of persistence diagrams are typically constructed extrinsically through embeddings into auxiliary spaces. For filtrations with finite indexing sets, the associated virtual persistence diagram group obtained by Grothendieck completion of the persistence diagram monoid is a finitely generated lattice. We define a phase map sending each persistence interval to a circular coordinate and a character map aggregating the phases of intervals in a virtual persistence diagram. We introduce heat damping on characters of virtual persistence diagram groups to suppress the unstable frequencies. We derive Lipschitz bounds for the resulting kernels and apply them in a synthetic segmentation experiment.

We use new homotopy-theoretic tools to prove the existence of smooth $U(1)$- and $Sp(1)$-actions on infinite families of exotic spheres. Such families of spheres are propagated by the complex and quaternionic analogues of the Mahowald invariant (also known as the root invariant). In particular, we prove that the complex (respectively, quaternionic) Mahowald invariant takes an element of the $k$-th stable stem $π_k^s$ represented by a homotopy sphere $Σ^k$ to an element of a higher stable stem $π_{k+\ell}^s$ represented by another homotopy sphere $Σ^{k+\ell}$ equipped with a smooth $U(1)$- (respectively, $Sp(1)$-) action with fixed points the original homotopy sphere $Σ^k\subset Σ^{k+\ell}$.

We extend the stable motivic homotopy category of Voevodsky to the class of scalloped algebraic stacks, and show that it admits the formalism of Grothendieck's six operations. Objects in this category represent generalized cohomology theories for stacks like algebraic K-theory, as well as new examples like genuine motivic cohomology and algebraic cobordism. These cohomology theories admit Gysin maps and satisfy homotopy invariance, localization, and Mayer-Vietoris. For example, we deduce that homotopy K-theory satisfies cdh descent on scalloped stacks. We also prove a fixed point localization formula for torus actions. Finally, the construction is contrasted with a "lisse-extended" stable motivic homotopy category, defined for arbitrary stacks: we show for example that lisse-extended motivic cohomology of quotient stacks is computed by the equivariant higher Chow groups of Edidin-Graham, and we also get a good new theory of Borel-equivariant algebraic cobordism. Moreover, the lisse-extended motivic homotopy type is shown to recover all previous constructions of motives of stacks.

Computing Persistent Homology for large point clouds remains a bottleneck for the wider adoption of persistent homology by the scientific community. We present an algorithm which can compute the degree-1 Vietoris-Rips Persistent Homology of point clouds in low dimensional Euclidean Space for larger point clouds.

McDuff and Segal proved that unordered configuration spaces of open manifolds satisfy homological stability: there is a stabilization map $σ: C_n(M)\to C_{n+1}(M)$ which is an isomorphism on $H_d(-;\mathbb{Z})$ for $n\gg d$. For a finite group $G$ and an open $G$-manifold $M$, under some hypotheses we define a family of equivariant stabilization maps $σ_{G/H}:C_n(M)\to C_{n+|G/H|}(M)$ for $H\leq G$. In general, these do not induce stability for Bredon homology, the equivariant analogue of singular homology. Instead, we show that each $σ_{G/H}$ induces isomorphisms on the ordinary homology of the fixed points of $C_n(M)$, and if the group is Dedekind (e.g. abelian), we obtain the following Bredon homological stability statement: $H^G_d(\bigsqcup_{n\geq 0}C_n(M))$ is finitely generated over $\mathbb{Z}[σ_{G/H} : H\leq G]$. This reduces to the classical statement when $G=e$.

Merge trees are a type of graph-based topological summary that tracks the evolution of connected components in the sublevel sets of scalar functions. They enjoy widespread applications in data analysis and scientific visualization. In this paper, we consider the problem of comparing two merge trees via the notion of interleaving distance in the metric space setting. We investigate various theoretical properties of such a metric. In particular, we show that the interleaving distance is intrinsic on the space of labeled merge trees and provide an algorithm to construct metric 1-centers for collections of labeled merge trees. We further prove that the intrinsic property of the interleaving distance also holds for the space of unlabeled merge trees. Our results are a first step toward performing statistics on graph-based topological summaries.

We extend discrete Morse-Bott theory to the setting of loop-free (or acyclic) categories. First of all, we state a homological version of Quillen's Theorem A in this context and introduce the notion of cellular categories. Second, we present a notion of vector field for loop-free categories. Third, we prove a homological collapsing theorem in the absence of critical objects in order to obtain the Morse inequalities. Examples are provided through the exposition. This answers partially a question by T. John: whether there is a Morse theory for loop-free (or acyclic) categories? [14].

We study the probabilistic convergence between the mapper graph and the Reeb graph of a topological space $\mathbb{X}$ equipped with a continuous function $f: \mathbb{X} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$. We first give a categorification of the mapper graph and the Reeb graph by interpreting them in terms of cosheaves and stratified covers of the real line $\mathbb{R}$. We then introduce a variant of the classic mapper graph of Singh et al.~(2007), referred to as the enhanced mapper graph, and demonstrate that such a construction approximates the Reeb graph of $(\mathbb{X}, f)$ when it is applied to points randomly sampled from a probability density function concentrated on $(\mathbb{X}, f)$. Our techniques are based on the interleaving distance of constructible cosheaves and topological estimation via kernel density estimates. Following Munch and Wang (2018), we first show that the mapper graph of $(\mathbb{X}, f)$, a constructible $\mathbb{R}$-space (with a fixed open cover), approximates the Reeb graph of the same space. We then construct an isomorphism between the mapper of $(\mathbb{X},f)$ to the mapper of a super-level set of a probability density function concentrated on $(\mathbb{X}, f)$. Finally, building on the approach of Bobrowski et al.~(2017), we show that, with high probability, we can recover the mapper of the super-level set given a sufficiently large sample. Our work is the first to consider the mapper construction using the theory of cosheaves in a probabilistic setting. It is part of an ongoing effort to combine sheaf theory, probability, and statistics, to support topological data analysis with random data.

Time dependence is a universal phenomenon in nature, and a variety of mathematical models in terms of dynamical systems have been developed to understand the time-dependent behavior of real-world problems. Originally constructed to analyze the topological persistence over spatial scales, persistent homology has rarely been devised for time evolution. We propose the use of a new filtration function for persistent homology which takes as input the adjacent oscillator trajectories of a dynamical system. We also regulate the dynamical system by a weighted graph Laplacian matrix derived from the network of interest, which embeds the topological connectivity of the network into the dynamical system. The resulting topological signatures, which we call evolutionary homology (EH) barcodes, reveal the topology-function relationship of the network and thus give rise to the quantitative analysis of nodal properties. The proposed EH is applied to protein residue networks for protein thermal fluctuation analysis, rendering the most accurate B-factor prediction of a set of 364 proteins. This work extends the utility of dynamical systems to the quantitative modeling and analysis of realistic physical systems.

We introduce the first unified theory for target tracking using Multiple Hypothesis Tracking, Topological Data Analysis, and machine learning. Our string of innovations are 1) robust topological features are used to encode behavioral information, 2) statistical models are fitted to distributions over these topological features, and 3) the target type classification methods of Wigren and Bar Shalom et al. are employed to exploit the resulting likelihoods for topological features inside of the tracking procedure. To demonstrate the efficacy of our approach, we test our procedure on synthetic vehicular data generated by the Simulation of Urban Mobility package.