Metric Geometry of the Signature Group for $p$-Variation Rough Paths

Abstract: The signatures of $p$-rough paths form a subgroup of sufficiently high-level truncated tensor algebras, whose inverse limit is a subgroup of the full tensor algebra. For $p \geq 1$, we provide a top-down description of the signature group as the inverse limit of finite-dimensional Carnot--Carathéodory geometries in the $p$-variation setting. We show that every compatible choice of metrics induces a topological tree structure on the inverse-limit group, under which the signature group is not a topological group. This extends the results of Enrico Le Donne and Roland Züst from bounded variation to rough paths. We also characterise the dependence of the inverse-limit groups and their metric completions on the choice of metric, identifying them with the tree-reduced path group of Horatio Boedihardjo, Xiang Geng, Terry Lyons, and Danyu Yang.