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_27: A standard way of approximating or discretizing a metric space is by taking its Rips complexes. These approximations for all parameters are often bound together into a filtration, to which we apply the fundamental group or the first homology. We call the resulting object persistence. Recent results demonstrate that persistence of a compact geodesic locally contractible space X carries a lot of geometric information. However, by definition the corresponding Rips complexes have uncountably many vertices. In this paper we show that nonetheless, the whole persistence of X may be obtained by an appropriate finite sample (subset of X), and that persistence of any subset of X is well interleaved with the persistence of X. It follows that the persistence of X is the minimum of persistences obtained by all finite samples. Furthermore, we prove a much improved Stability theorem for such approximations. As a special case we provide for each (r>0 ) a density (s>0 ), so that for each s-dense sample (S X ) the corresponding fundamental group (and the first homology) of the Rips complex of S is isomorphic to the one of X, leading to an improved reconstruction result.
@cite_1: Metric graphs are special types of metric spaces used to model and represent simple, ubiquitous, geometric relations in data such as biological networks, social networks, and road networks. We are interested in giving a qualitative description of metric graphs using topological summaries. In particular, we provide a complete characterization of the one-dimensional intrinsic Cech persistence diagrams for finite metric graphs using persistent homology. Together with complementary results by , which imply the results on intrinsic Cech persistence diagrams in all dimensions for a single cycle, our results constitute the important steps toward characterizing intrinsic Cech persistence diagrams for arbitrary finite metric graphs across all dimensions.
@cite_6: 
@cite_8: We inspect Vietoris-Rips complexes @math of certain metric spaces @math using a new generalization of Bestvina-Brady discrete Morse theory. Our main result is a pair of metric criteria on @math , called the Morse Criterion and Link Criterion, that allow us to deduce information about the homotopy types of certain @math . One application is to topological data analysis, specifically persistence of homotopy type for certain Vietoris-Rips complexes. For example we recover some results of Adamaszek-Adams and Hausmann regarding homotopy types of @math . Another application is to geometric group theory; we prove that any group acting geometrically on a metric space satisfying a version of the Link Criterion admits a geometric action on a contractible simplicial complex, which has implications for the finiteness properties of the group. This applies for example to asymptotically @math groups. We also prove that any group with a word metric satisfying the Link Criterion in an appropriate range has a contractible Vietoris-Rips complex, and use combings to exhibit a family of groups with this property.
Related papers include @cite_1 which studies the 1-dimensional persistence of C ech and Vietoris--Rips complexes of metric graphs, @cite_6 which extends this to geodesic spaces, @cite_27 which studies approximations of Vietoris--Rips complexes by finite samples even at higher scale parameters, and @cite_8 which applies Bestvina--Brady discrete Morse theory to Vietoris--Rips complexes.