1-Dimensional Intrinsic Persistence of Geodesic Spaces

Given a compact geodesic space $X$ we apply the fundamental group and alternatively the first homology group functor to the corresponding Rips or \v{C}ech filtration of $X$ to obtain what we call a persistence. This paper contains the theory describing such persistence: properties of the set of critical points, their precise relationship to the size of holes, the structure of persistence and the relationship between open and close, Rips and \v{C}ech induced persistences. Amongst other results we prove that a Rips critical point $c$ corresponds to an isometrically embedded circle of length $3c$, that a homology persistence of a locally contractible space with coefficients in a field encodes the lengths of the lexicographically smallest base and that Rips and \v{C}ech induced persistences are isomorphic up to a factor $3/4$. The theory describes geometric properties of the underlying space encoded and extractable from persistence.