Fat Triangulations and Differential Geometry

Abstract: We study the differential geometric consequences of our previous result on the existence of fat triangulations, in conjunction with a result of Cheeger, M\"{u}ller and Schrader, regarding the convergence of Lipschitz-Killing curvatures of piecewise-flat approximations of smooth Riemannian manifolds. A further application to the existence of quasiconformal mappings between manifolds, as well as an extension of the triangulation result to the case of almost Riemannian manifolds, are also given. In addition, the notion of fatness of triangulations and its relation to metric curvature and to excess is explored. Moreover, applications of the main results, and in particular a purely metric approach to Regge calculus, are also investigated.