Computing the Skyscraper Invariant

We develop the first algorithms for computing the Skyscraper Invariant [FJNT24]. This is a filtration of the classical rank invariant for multiparameter persistence modules defined by the Harder-Narasimhan filtrations along every central charge supported at a single parameter value. Cheng’s algorithm [Cheng24] can be used to compute HN filtrations of arbitrary acyclic quiver representations in polynomial time in the total dimension, but in practice, the large dimension of persistence modules makes this direct approach infeasible. We show that by exploiting the additivity of the HN filtration and the special central charges, one can get away with a brute-force approach. For d-parameter modules, this produces an FPT ε-approximate algorithm with runtime dominated by 𝒪(1/ε^d ⋅ T_dec), where T_dec is the time for decomposition, which we compute with aida [DJK25]. We show that the wall-and-chamber structure of the module can be computed via lower envelopes of degree d - 1 polynomials. This allows for an exact computation of the Skyscraper Invariant roughly in 𝒪(n^d ⋅ T_dec) time for n the size of the presentation and enables a fast hybrid algorithm. For 2-parameter modules, we have implemented not only our algorithms but also, for the first time, Cheng’s algorithm. We compare all algorithms and, as a proof of concept for data analysis, compute a filtered version of the Multiparameter Landscape for biomedical data.