Thickenings of a metric space capture local geometric properties of the space. Here we exhibit applications of lower bounding the topology of thickenings of the circle and more generally the sphere. We explain interconnections with the geometry of circle actions on Euclidean space, the structure of zeros of trigonometric polynomials, and theorems of Borsuk-Ulam type. We use the combinatorial and geometric structure of the convex hull of orbits of circle actions on Euclidean space to give geometric proofs of the homotopy type of metric thickenings of the circle. Homotopical connectivity bounds of thickenings of the sphere allow us to prove that a weighted average of function values of odd maps @math on a small diameter set is zero. We prove an additional generalization of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem for odd maps @math . We prove such results for odd maps from the circle to any Euclidean space with optimal quantitative bounds. This in turn implies that any raked homogeneous trigonometric polynomial has a zero on a subset of the circle of a specific diameter; these results are optimal.
@cite_35: Combining concepts from topology and algorithms, this book delivers what its title promises: an introduction to the field of computational topology. Starting with motivating problems in both mathematics and computer science and building up from classic topics in geometric and algebraic topology, the third part of the text advances to persistent homology. This point of view is critically important in turning a mostly theoretical field of mathematics into one that is relevant to a multitude of disciplines in the sciences and engineering. The main approach is the discovery of topology through algorithms. The book is ideal for teaching a graduate or advanced undergraduate course in computational topology, as it develops all the background of both the mathematical and algorithmic aspects of the subject from first principles. Thus the text could serve equally well in a course taught in a mathematics department or computer science department.
@cite_37: We show that the nerve and clique complexes of n arcs in the circle are homotopy equivalent to either a point, an odd-dimensional sphere, or a wedge sum of spheres of the same even dimension. Moreover this homotopy type can be computed in time @math O(nlogn). For the particular case of the nerve complex of evenly-spaced arcs of the same length, we determine explicit homology bases and we relate the complex to a cyclic polytope with n vertices. We give three applications of our knowledge of the homotopy types of nerve complexes of circular arcs. First, we show that the Lovasz bound on the chromatic number of a circular complete graph is either sharp or off by one. Second, we use the connection to cyclic polytopes to give a novel topological proof of a known upper bound on the distance between successive roots of a homogeneous trigonometric polynomial. Third, we show that the Vietoris---Rips or ambient Cech simplicial complex of n points in the circle is homotopy equivalent to either a point, an odd-dimensional sphere, or a wedge sum of spheres of the same even dimension, and furthermore this homotopy type can be computed in time @math O(nlogn).
@cite_14: 
@cite_28: Given a metric space X and a distance threshold r>0, the Vietoris-Rips simplicial complex has as its simplices the finite subsets of X of diameter less than r. A theorem of Jean-Claude Hausmann states that if X is a Riemannian manifold and r is sufficiently small, then the Vietoris-Rips complex is homotopy equivalent to the original manifold. Little is known about the behavior of Vietoris-Rips complexes for larger values of r, even though these complexes arise naturally in applications using persistent homology. We show that as r increases, the Vietoris-Rips complex of the circle obtains the homotopy types of the circle, the 3-sphere, the 5-sphere, the 7-sphere, ..., until finally it is contractible. As our main tool we introduce a directed graph invariant, the winding fraction, which in some sense is dual to the circular chromatic number. Using the winding fraction we classify the homotopy types of the Vietoris-Rips complex of an arbitrary (possibly infinite) subset of the circle, and we study the expected homotopy type of the Vietoris-Rips complex of a uniformly random sample from the circle. Moreover, we show that as the distance parameter increases, the ambient Cech complex of the circle also obtains the homotopy types of the circle, the 3-sphere, the 5-sphere, the 7-sphere, ..., until finally it is contractible.
@cite_9: We show that for every closed Riemannian manifold X there exists a positive number¶ ( > 0 ) such that for all 0 0 ) such that for every metric space Y with Gromov-Hausdorff distance to X less than¶ ( ) the geometric ( )-complex ( |Y_ | ) is homotopy equivalent to X.¶ In particular, this gives a positive answer to a question of Hausmann [4].
@cite_32: We study the behaviour of clique complexes of graphs under the operation of taking graph powers. As an example we compute the clique complexes of powers of cycles, or, in other words, the independence complexes of circular complete graphs.
While the theorems of @cite_14 @cite_9 describe conditions under which the homotopy type of a manifold is recoverable from a Vietoris--Rips complex for sufficiently small @math , much less is known about the topological behavior of these constructions for large values of @math , even though large values of @math commonly arise in applications of persistent homology @cite_35 . However, more is known in the specific case when the underlying manifold is the circle. The following theorem from @cite_28 is based on @cite_32 @cite_37 .