Courant, Bezout, and Persistence - Lecture 2

Explore the second lecture of the minicourse "Courant, Bezout, and Persistence" delivered by Leonid Polterovich from Tel Aviv University. Delve into an innovative approach to studying function oscillation using persistence modules and barcodes, a technique rooted in algebraic topology and data analysis. Discover how this method applies to spectral geometry, particularly in analyzing eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on Riemannian manifolds. Examine an extension of Courant's nodal domain theorem for linear combinations of eigenfunctions, addressing a long-standing problem in the field. Investigate a version of Bezout's theorem in the context of eigenfunctions, supporting the intuition that eigenfunctions behave similarly to polynomials with degrees comparable to the square root of the eigenvalue. Gain insights into the necessary fundamentals of topological persistence and spectral geometry. The lecture draws from the paper "Coarse nodal count and topological persistence," co-authored by Polterovich and colleagues.