Auditory Morse analysis of triangulated manifolds

Visualization of high-dimensional or large geometric data sets is inherently difficult, so we experiment with the use of audio to display the shape and connectivity of these data sets. Sonification is used as both an addition to and a substitution for the visual display. We describe a new algorithm called wave traversal that provides a necessary intermediate step to sonification of the data; it produces an ordered sequence of subsets, called waves, that allows us to map the data to time. In this paper we focus in detail on the mathematics of wave traversal, in particular, how wave traversal can be used as a discrete Morse function.