More on Poincare-Hopf and Gauss-Bonnet

Oliver Knill

Published 2019-12-02Version 1

We illustrate connections between differential geometry on finite simple graphs G=(V,E) and Riemannian manifolds (M,g). The link is that curvature can be defined integral geometrically as an expectation in a probability space of Poincare-Hopf indices of coloring or Morse functions. Regge calculus with an isometric Nash embedding links then the Gauss-Bonnet-Chern integrand of a Riemannian manifold with the graph curvature. There is also a direct nonstandard approach: if V is a finite set containing all standard points of M and E contains pairs which are infinitesimally close in the sense of internal set theory, one gets a finite simple graph (V,E) which gets a curvature which as a measure corresponds to the standard curvature. The probabilistic approach is an umbrella framework which covers discrete spaces, piecewise linear spaces, manifolds or varieties.