Perturbations of roots under linear transformations of polynomials

Let \cP_n be the complex vector space of all polynomials of degree at most $n$. We give several characterizations of the linear operators T\in\cL(\cP_n) for which there exists a constant $C > 0$ such that for all nonconstant p\in\cP_n there exist a root $u$ of $p$ and a root $v$ of $Tp$ with $|u-v|\leq C$. We prove that such perturbations leave the degree unchanged and, for a suitable pairing of the roots of $p$ and $Tp$, the roots are never displaced by more than a uniform constant independent on $p$. We show that such ``good'' operators $T$ are exactly the invertible elements of the commutative algebra generated by the differentiation operator. We provide upper bounds in terms of $T$ for the relevant constants.Comment: 23 page

Homology and Robustness of Level and Interlevel Sets

Given a function f: \Xspace \to \Rspace on a topological space, we consider the preimages of intervals and their homology groups and show how to read the ranks of these groups from the extended persistence diagram of $f$. In addition, we quantify the robustness of the homology classes under perturbations of $f$ using well groups, and we show how to read the ranks of these groups from the same extended persistence diagram. The special case \Xspace = \Rspace^3 has ramifications in the fields of medical imaging and scientific visualization

Exponential bounds for the support convergence in the Single Ring Theorem

We consider an $n$ by $n$ matrix of the form $A=UTV$, with $U, V$ some independent Haar-distributed unitary matrices and $T$ a deterministic matrix. We prove that for $k\sim n^{1/6}$ and $b^2:=\frac{1}{n}\operatorname{Tr}(|T|^2)$, as $n$ tends to infinity, we have $$\mathbb{E} \operatorname{Tr} (A^{k}(A^{k})^*) \ \lesssim \ b^{2k}\qquad \textrm{and} \qquad\mathbb{E}[|\operatorname{Tr} (A^{k})|^2] \ \lesssim \ b^{2k}.$$ This gives a simple proof (with slightly weakened hypothesis) of the convergence of the support in the Single Ring Theorem, improves the available error bound for this convergence from $n^{-\alpha}$ to $e^{-cn^{1/6}}$ and proves that the rate of this convergence is at most $n^{-1/6}\log n$.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure. Minor typos corrected, references added. To appear in J. Funct. Ana