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Title: Metric Thickenings and Group Actions
Let [Formula: see text] be a group acting properly and by isometries on a metric space [Formula: see text]; it follows that the quotient or orbit space [Formula: see text] is also a metric space. We study the Vietoris–Rips and Čech complexes of [Formula: see text]. Whereas (co)homology theories for metric spaces let the scale parameter of a Vietoris–Rips or Čech complex go to zero, and whereas geometric group theory requires the scale parameter to be sufficiently large, we instead consider intermediate scale parameters (neither tending to zero nor to infinity). As a particular case, we study the Vietoris–Rips and Čech thickenings of projective spaces at the first scale parameter where the homotopy type changes.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1712788 1934725 1830676
PAR ID:
10207695
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Topology and Analysis
ISSN:
1793-5253
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 27
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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  1. We consider the topological and geometric reconstruction of a geodesic subspace of [Formula: see text] both from the Čech and Vietoris-Rips filtrations on a finite, Hausdorff-close, Euclidean sample. Our reconstruction technique leverages the intrinsic length metric induced by the geodesics on the subspace. We consider the distortion and convexity radius as our sampling parameters for the reconstruction problem. For a geodesic subspace with finite distortion and positive convexity radius, we guarantee a correct computation of its homotopy and homology groups from the sample. This technique provides alternative sampling conditions to the existing and commonly used conditions based on weak feature size and [Formula: see text]–reach, and performs better under certain types of perturbations of the geodesic subspace. For geodesic subspaces of [Formula: see text], we also devise an algorithm to output a homotopy equivalent geometric complex that has a very small Hausdorff distance to the unknown underlying space. 
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  2. We derive conditions under which the reconstruction of a target space is topologically correct via the Čech complex or the Vietoris-Rips complex obtained from possibly noisy point cloud data. We provide two novel theoretical results. First, we describe sufficient conditions under which any non-empty intersection of finitely many Euclidean balls intersected with a positive reach set is contractible, so that the Nerve theorem applies for the restricted Čech complex. Second, we demonstrate the homotopy equivalence of a positive μ-reach set and its offsets. Applying these results to the restricted Čech complex and using the interleaving relations with the Čech complex (or the Vietoris-Rips complex), we formulate conditions guaranteeing that the target space is homotopy equivalent to the Čech complex (or the Vietoris-Rips complex), in terms of the μ-reach. Our results sharpen existing results. 
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  3. Abstract

    We study a family of invariants of compact metric spaces that combines the Curvature Sets defined by Gromov in the 1980 s with Vietoris–Rips Persistent Homology. For given integers$$k\ge 0$$k0and$$n\ge 1$$n1we consider the dimensionkVietoris–Rips persistence diagrams ofallsubsets of a given metric space with cardinality at mostn. We call these invariantspersistence setsand denote them as$${\textbf{D}}_{n,k}^{\textrm{VR}}$$Dn,kVR. We first point out that this family encompasses the usual Vietoris–Rips diagrams. We then establish that (1) for certain range of values of the parametersnandk, computing these invariants is significantly more efficient than computing the usual Vietoris–Rips persistence diagrams, (2) these invariants have very good discriminating power and, in many cases, capture information that is imperceptible through standard Vietoris–Rips persistence diagrams, and (3) they enjoy stability properties analogous to those of the usual Vietoris–Rips persistence diagrams. We precisely characterize some of them in the case of spheres and surfaces with constant curvature using a generalization of Ptolemy’s inequality. We also identify a rich family of metric graphs for which$${\textbf{D}}_{4,1}^{\textrm{VR}}$$D4,1VRfully recovers their homotopy type by studying split-metric decompositions. Along the way we prove some useful properties of Vietoris–Rips persistence diagrams using Mayer–Vietoris sequences. These yield a geometric algorithm for computing the Vietoris–Rips persistence diagram of a spaceXwith cardinality$$2k+2$$2k+2with quadratic time complexity as opposed to the much higher cost incurred by the usual algebraic algorithms relying on matrix reduction.

     
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  4. For [Formula: see text], the coarse similarity class of A, denoted by [Formula: see text], is the set of all [Formula: see text] such that the symmetric difference of A and B has asymptotic density 0. There is a natural metric [Formula: see text] on the space [Formula: see text] of coarse similarity classes defined by letting [Formula: see text] be the upper density of the symmetric difference of A and B. We study the metric space of coarse similarity classes under this metric, and show in particular that between any two distinct points in this space there are continuum many geodesic paths. We also study subspaces of the form [Formula: see text] where [Formula: see text] is closed under Turing equivalence, and show that there is a tight connection between topological properties of such a space and computability-theoretic properties of [Formula: see text].

    We then define a distance between Turing degrees based on Hausdorff distance in the metric space [Formula: see text]. We adapt a proof of Monin to show that the Hausdorff distances between Turing degrees that occur are exactly 0, [Formula: see text], and 1, and study which of these values occur most frequently in the senses of Lebesgue measure and Baire category. We define a degree a to be attractive if the class of all degrees at distance [Formula: see text] from a has measure 1, and dispersive otherwise. In particular, we study the distribution of attractive and dispersive degrees. We also study some properties of the metric space of Turing degrees under this Hausdorff distance, in particular the question of which countable metric spaces are isometrically embeddable in it, giving a graph-theoretic sufficient condition for embeddability.

    Motivated by a couple of issues arising in the above work, we also study the computability-theoretic and reverse-mathematical aspects of a Ramsey-theoretic theorem due to Mycielski, which in particular implies that there is a perfect set whose elements are mutually 1-random, as well as a perfect set whose elements are mutually 1-generic.

    Finally, we study the completeness of [Formula: see text] from the perspectives of computability theory and reverse mathematics.

     
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  5. We address the following natural extension problem for group actions: Given a group [Formula: see text], a subgroup [Formula: see text], and an action of [Formula: see text] on a metric space, when is it possible to extend it to an action of the whole group [Formula: see text] on a (possibly different) metric space? When does such an extension preserve interesting properties of the original action of [Formula: see text]? We begin by formalizing this problem and present a construction of an induced action which behaves well when [Formula: see text] is hyperbolically embedded in [Formula: see text]. Moreover, we show that induced actions can be used to characterize hyperbolically embedded subgroups. We also obtain some results for elementary amenable groups. 
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