Finite difference method on flat surfaces with a flat unitary vector bundle

Abstract

We establish an asymptotic relation between the spectrum of the discrete Laplacian associated to discretizations of a half-translation surface with a flat unitary vector bundle and the spectrum of the Friedrichs extension of the Laplacian with von Neumann boundary conditions. As an interesting byproduct of our study, we obtain Harnack-type estimates on "almost harmonic" discrete functions, defined on the graphs, which approximate a given surface. The results of this paper will be later used to relate the asymptotic expansion of the number of spanning trees, spanning forests and weighted cycle-rooted spanning forests on the discretizations to the corresponding zeta-regularized determinants.