Discrete Stratified Morse Theory: A User's Guide
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Inspired by the works of Forman on discrete Morse theory, which is a combinatorial adaptation to cell complexes of classical Morse theory on manifolds, we introduce a discrete analogue of the stratified Morse theory of Goresky and MacPherson (1988). We describe the basics of this theory and prove fundamental theorems relating the topology of a general simplicial complex with the critical simplices of a discrete stratified Morse function on the complex. We also provide an algorithm that constructs a discrete stratified Morse function out of an arbitrary function defined on a finite simplicial complex; this is different from simply constructing a discrete Morse function on such a complex. We borrow Forman's idea of a "user's guide," where we give simple examples to convey the utility of our theory.
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