On Interval Decomposability of 2D Persistence Modules

Abstract: In the persistent homology of filtrations, the indecomposable decompositions provide the persistence diagrams. However, in almost all cases of multidimensional persistence, the classification of all indecomposable modules is known to be a wild problem. One direction is to consider the subclass of interval-decomposable persistence modules, which are direct sums of interval representations. We introduce the definition of pre-interval representations, a more natural algebraic definition, and study the relationships between pre-interval, interval, and indecomposable thin representations. We show that over the ``equioriented'' commutative $2$D grid, these concepts are equivalent. Moreover, we provide a criterion for determining whether or not an $n$D persistence module is interval/pre-interval/thin-decomposable without having to explicitly compute decompositions. For $2$D persistence modules, we provide an algorithm together with a worst-case complexity analysis that uses the total number of intervals in an equioriented commutative $2$D grid. We also propose several heuristics to speed up the computation.