Empirical Hodge Laplacians: Spectral Convergence and Harmonic Forms from Point Clouds

Abstract

Let $M^n\subset\mathbb R^d$ be a closed, connected, orientable $C^4$-smooth Riemannian submanifold of dimension $n\ge3$. We construct, for each degree $0\le k\le n$, a family of deformed Hodge Laplacians $Δ_t^k$, $t>0$, defined in terms of the extrinsic geometry of $M^n$, and prove that $Δ_t^k$ converges uniformly to the classical Hodge Laplacian $Δ^k$ as $t\to0^+$. Given an i.i.d. uniformly distributed point cloud $S_m\subset M^n$, we define empirical Hodge operators $\widehatΔ_{t,S_m}^k$. Under the scaling $t=m^{-1/(2n)}$, we prove uniform consistency in probability and compact Mosco convergence in probability of the associated quadratic forms. Consequently, the empirical spectral cluster near zero contains exactly the $k$-th Betti number $b_k$ of eigenvalues, counted with multiplicity, and converges in the transported discrete $L^2$-sense to the space of harmonic $k$-forms. We also construct consistent empirical estimators of the tangent projection, the second fundamental form, the Riemannian curvature tensor, and the Weitzenböck curvature endomorphisms. As applications, we obtain consistent recovery of the Betti numbers and harmonic representatives of de Rham cohomology, as well as of the Pontryagin forms and their periods. Evaluating these periods on a homology basis recovers the corresponding real Pontryagin classes from sampled data.