On the curvature of piecewise flat spaces (Q2266237)

The main result is: Let \(R^ j(U)\) be the integral of the j-th Lipschitz-Killing curvature of a Riemannian manifold \(M^ n\) over a neighborhood U bounded in \(M^ n\). Let \(M^ n_{\eta}\) be a piecewise linear approximation of \(M^ n\) of fatness bounded away from zero and \(R^ j_{\eta}\) the combinatorially defined j-th Lipschitz-Killing curvature. Then under certain regularity conditions for the approximations, \(| R^ j(U)-R^ j_{\eta}(U)| \to 0\) as \(\eta\) \(\to 0\). The corresponding pointwise result is false. The proof involves constructions in linear algebra and combinatorial topology that are interesting in themselves. The paper also contains a great number of illuminating comments, and an extension of the result to manifolds with boundary.