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We discuss and review recent developments in the area of applied algebraic topology, such as persistent homology and barcodes. In particular, we discuss how these are related to understanding more about manifold learning from random point cloud data, the algebraic structure of simplicial complexes determined by random vertices and, in most detail, the algebraic topology of the excursion sets of random fields.

In this paper we extend the notion of the Euler characteristic to persistent homology and give the relationship between the Euler integral of a function and the Euler characteristic of the function's persistent homology. We then proceed to compute the expected Euler integral of a Gaussian random field using the Gaussian kinematic formula and obtain a simple closed form expression. This results in the first explicitly computable mean of a quantitative descriptor for the persistent homology of a Gaussian random field.

Abstract. In this paper we introduce a new way of displacing Lagrangian fibers in toric symplectic manifolds, a generalization of McDuff's original method of probes. Extended probes are formed by deflecting one probe by another auxiliary probe. Using them, we are able to displace all fibers in Hirzebruch surfaces except those already known to be nondisplaceable, and can also displace an open dense set of fibers in the weighted projective space P(1, 3, 5) after resolving the singularities. We also investigate the displaceability question in sectors and their resolutions. There are still many cases in which there is an open set of fibers whose displaceability status is unknown.

We build homogeneous quasi-morphisms on the universal cover of the contactomorphism group for certain prequantizations of monotone symplectic toric manifolds. This is done using Givental's nonlinear Maslov index and a contact reduction technique for quasimorphisms. We show how these quasi-morphisms lead to a hierarchy of rigid subsets of contact manifolds. We also show that the nonlinear Maslov index has a vanishing property, which plays a key role in our proofs. Finally we present applications to orderability of contact manifolds and Sandon-type metrics on contactomorphism groups.