Approximate and discrete Euclidean vector bundles

Abstract: We introduce $\varepsilon$-approximate versions of the notion of Euclidean vector bundle for $\varepsilon \geq 0$, which recover the classical notion of Euclidean vector bundle when $\varepsilon = 0$. In particular, we study \v{C}ech cochains with coefficients in the orthogonal group that satisfy an approximate cocycle condition. We show that $\varepsilon$-approximate vector bundles can be used to represent classical vector bundles when $\varepsilon > 0$ is sufficiently small. We also introduce distances between approximate vector bundles and use them to prove that sufficiently similar approximate vector bundles represent the same classical vector bundle. This gives a way of specifying vector bundles over finite simplicial complexes using a finite amount of data, and also allows for some tolerance to noise when working with vector bundles in an applied setting. As an example, we prove a reconstruction theorem for vector bundles from finite samples. We give algorithms for the effective computation of low-dimensional characteristic classes of vector bundles directly from discrete and approximate representations and illustrate the usage of these algorithms with computational examples.