Collapse-invariant properties of spaces equipped with signals or directions

Collapsing cell complexes was first introduced in the 1930's as a way to deform a space into a topological-equivalent subspace with a sequence of elementary moves. Recently, discrete Morse theory techniques provided an efficient way to construct deformation retracts collapsing one space into the other while preserving global topological properties. This type of collapse, called a Morse matching, has been widely used to speed up computations in (persistent) homology by reducing the size of complexes. Unlike classical collapses, in this thesis we consider topological spaces equipped with signals or directions. The main goal is then to reduce the size of the spaces while preserving as much as possible of both the topological structure and the properties of the signals or the directions. In the first part of the thesis we explore collapsing in topological signal processing. In this context, each signal on the cells of a complex is processed using the combinatorial Laplacian and the resultant Hodge decomposition. In Article 2.1 we provide an approach to signal compression and reconstruction on chain complexes that leverages the tools of algebraic discrete Morse theory. We first prove that any deformation retract of real finite-dimensional based chain complex is equivalent to a Morse matching. We then study the interaction between the Hodge decomposition and signal compression and reconstruction. Specifically, we prove that parts of a signal's Hodge decomposition are preserved under compression and reconstruction for specific classes of discrete Morse deformation retracts of a given based chain complex. Finally, we provide an algorithm to compute Morse matchings with minimal reconstruction error. Complementary to our theoretic results in topological signal processing, we provide two applications in this field. Article 2.2 extends graph convolutional neural networks to simplicial complexes, while Article 2.3 presents a novel algorithm, inspired by the well-known spectral clustering algorithm, to embed simplices in a Euclidean space. The object of our studies in the second part of the thesis is topological spaces equipped with a sense of direction. In the directed setting, the topology of the space is characterized by directed paths between fixed initial and terminal points. Motivated by applications in concurrent programs, we focus on directed Euclidean cubical complexes and their spaces of directed paths. In Article 3.1 we define a notion of directed collapsibility for Euclidean cubical complexes using the notion of past links, a combinatorial local representations of cubical complexes. We show that this notion of collapsability preserves given properties of the directed path spaces. In particular, we give sufficient conditions for a directed Euclidean cubical complex to have a contractible or a connected space of directed paths from a fixed initial vertex. In Article 3.2 we extend these results, providing further conditions for directed collapses t