merge trees

\(\def\Real{\mathbb{R}}\def\tree{\mathcal{T}}\) Consider a path metric space \(M\) and a continuous function \(f:M\to \Real\). For simplicity, all such pairs here will have sublevel sets of \(f\) compact (so that the function is bounded from below). Then one can form the so-called merge tree (see, e.g. here, for motivation, and some history), a new topological space (let’s […]