Test the observational robustness and complementarity of persistence-diagram distances

Determine whether persistence-diagram distances remain complementary to two-point statistics after incorporating survey masks and window functions, redshift-space distortions or photometric-redshift smearing, stellar-mass completeness and ranking scatter, fiber collisions or blending, and central–satellite misclassification in realistic mock surveys.

Background

The paper proposes applying the persistence-diagram and Wasserstein-distance analysis to large-scale redshift surveys to constrain AGN-feedback-driven spatial quenching bias. Its simulation results show that these statistics can localize feedback-dependent differences by galaxy population, host-halo mass, homology dimension, and scale.

However, the reported results use idealized simulation catalogs and do not include the observational effects encountered in real surveys. The authors therefore leave unresolved whether the persistence-based measurements will retain information beyond conventional two-point statistics once survey geometry, redshift uncertainties, incompleteness, blending, and group-finder errors are modeled.