Discretization of compact Riemannian manifolds applied to the spectrum of Laplacian (Q2386429)

Let \(M(n,\kappa,r_0)\) for \(\kappa>0\) be the set of all compact \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifolds \((M,g)\) with Ricci curvature and injectivity radius bounded from below: \[ \text{Ric}(M,g)\geq-(n-1)\kappa g,\qquad \text{inj}(M)\geq r_0>0. \] The author shows Theorem: There exist \(c=c(n,\kappa,r_0)>0\) and \(C=C(n,\kappa,r_0)>0\) such that if \((M,g)\in M(n,\kappa,r_0)\) and if \(X\) is a discretization associated to \(M\), one has \[ c\leq{{\lambda_k(M,g)}\over{\lambda_k(X)}}\leq C \] if \(k<| X| \) where \(\lambda_k(\cdot)\) denotes the \(k\)-th eigenvalue of the associated Laplacian. This result is used to give a simple proof of a theorem of \textit{R. Brooks} [J. Differ. Geom. 23, 97--107 (1986; Zbl 0576.58033)] that the first non-zero eigenvalue of a tower of covering spaces of a compact manifold goes to zero if and only if the Cheeger constant of the discretizations of the covering spaces also goes to zero. The author also uses this result to compare the spectrum of two \((M_i,g_i)\in M(n_i,\kappa,r_0)\) that are close with respect to the Gromov-Hausdorff distance and to establish a uniform control if \(\dim(M_1)=\dim(M_2)\) of the form \[ c\leq{\lambda_k{(M_1,g_1})\over{\lambda_k(M_2,g_2)}}\leq C\,. \] The author also provides suitable examples showing the assumption on the injectivity radius is essential.