G‐invariant persistent homology

Classical persistent homology is a powerful mathematical tool for shape comparison. Unfortunately, it is not tailored to study the action of transformation groups that are different from the group Homeo(X) of all self‐homeomorphisms of a topological space X. This fact restricts its use in applications. In order to obtain better lower bounds for the natural pseudo‐distance d_G associated with a group G ? Homeo(X), we need to adapt persistent homology and consider G‐invariant persistent homology. Roughly speaking, the main idea consists in defining persistent homology by means of a set of chains that is invariant under the action of G. In this paper, we formalize this idea and prove the stability of the persistent Betti number functions in G‐invariant persistent homology with respect to the natural pseudo‐distance d_G. We also show how G‐invariant persistent homology could be used in applications concerning shape comparison, when the invariance group is a proper subgroup of the group of all self‐homeomorphisms of a topological space. In this paper, we will assume that the space X is triangulable, in order to guarantee that the persistent Betti number functions are finite without using any tameness assumption. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reeb graphs of curves are stable under function perturbations

Reeb graphs provide a method to combinatorially describe the shape of a manifold endowed with a Morse function. One question deserving attention is whether Reeb graphs are robust against function perturbations. Focusing on one‐dimensional manifolds, we define an editing distance between Reeb graphs of curves, in terms of the cost necessary to transform one graph into another through editing moves. Our main result is that changes in Morse functions induce smaller changes in the editing distance between Reeb graphs of curves, implying stability of Reeb graphs under function perturbations. We also prove that our editing distance is equal to the natural pseudo‐distance and, moreover, that it is lower bounded by the bottleneck distance of persistent homology. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A concept of absolute continuity and its characterization in terms of convergence in variation

We study the notion of φ‐absolute continuity, providing several equivalent definitions, and we prove a characterization of the space of φ‐absolutely continuous functions in terms of convergence in variation for a family of Mellin integral operators in the multidimensional setting.