On Homotopy Types of Vietoris-Rips Complexes of Metric Gluings

Abstract: We study Vietoris-Rips complexes of metric wedge sums and metric gluings. We show that the Vietoris-Rips complex of a wedge sum, equipped with a natural metric, is homotopy equivalent to the wedge sum of the Vietoris-Rips complexes. We also provide generalizations for when two metric spaces are glued together along a common isometric subset. As our main example, we deduce the homotopy type of the Vietoris-Rips complex of two metric graphs glued together along a sufficiently short path (compared to lengths of certain loops in the input graphs). As a result, we can describe the persistent homology, in all homological dimensions, of the Vietoris-Rips complexes of a wide class of metric graphs.