Asymptotic Determinant of Discrete Laplace-Beltrami Operators

Abstract

We study combinatorial Laplacians on rectangular subgraphs of $ \epsilon \mathbb{Z}^2 $ that approximate Laplace-Beltrami operators of Riemannian metrics as $ \epsilon \rightarrow 0 $. These laplacians arise as follows: we define the notion of a Riemmanian metric structure on a graph. We then define combinatorial free field theories and describe how these can be regarded as finite dimensional approximations of scalar field theory. We focus on the Gaussian field theory on rectangular subgraphs of $ \mathbb{Z}^2 $ and study its partition function by computing the asymptotic determinant of the discrete laplacian.