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.