Persistent Homology with Selective Rips complexes detects geodesic circles

Abstract: This paper introduces a method to detect each geometrically significant loop that is a geodesic circle (an isometric embedding of $S^1$) and a bottleneck loop (meaning that each of its perturbations increases the length) in a geodesic space using persistent homology. Under fairly mild conditions we show that such a loop either terminates a $1$-dimensional homology class or gives rise to a $2$-dimensional homology class in persistent homology. The main tool in this detection technique are selective Rips complexes, new custom made complexes that function as an appropriate combinatorial lens for persistent homology in order to detect the above mentioned loops. The main argument is based on a new concept of a local winding number, which turns out to be an invariant of certain homology classes.