Ripser: Efficient computation of Vietoris–Rips persistence barcodes

I will discuss the efficient computation of the Vietoris–Rips persistence barcode for a finite metric space. The implementation in the newly developed C++ code “Ripser” focuses on memory and time efficiency, outperforming previous software by a factor of more than 40 in computation time and a factor of more than 15 in memory efficiency on typical benchmark examples. The improved computational efficiency is based on a close connection between persistent homology and discrete Morse theory, together with novel algorithmic design principles, carrying out a matrix algorithm without actually storing the entire matrix in memory.