Stable resolutions of multi-parameter persistence modules

Abstract: The theory of persistence, which arises from topological data analysis, has been intensively studied in the one-parameter case both theoretically and in its applications. However, its extension to the multi-parameter case raises numerous difficulties. Indeed, it has been shown that there exists no complete discrete invariant for persistence modules with many parameters, such as so-called barcodes in the one-parameter case. To tackle this problem, some new algebraic invariants have been proposed to study multi-parameter persistence modules, adapting classical ideas from commutative algebra and algebraic geometry to this context. Nevertheless, the crucial question of the stability of these invariants has raised few attention so far, and many of the proposed invariants do not satisfy a naive form of stability. In this paper, we equip the homotopy and the derived category of multi-parameter persistence modules with an appropriate interleaving distance. We prove that resolution functors are always isometric with respect to this distance, hence opening the door to performing homological algebra operations while "keeping track" of stability. This approach, we believe, can lead to the definition of new stable invariants for multi-parameter persistence, and to new computable lower bounds for the interleaving distance (which has been recently shown to be NP-hard to compute in the case with more than one parameter).