Approximate and discrete Euclidean vector bundles

We introduce ε-approximate versions of the notion of Euclidean vector bundle for ε≥ 0, which recover the classical notion of Euclidean vector bundle when ε= 0. In particular, we study Čech cochains with coefficients in the orthogonal group that satisfy an approximate cocycle condition. We show that ε-approximate vector bundles can be used to represent classical vector bundles when ε > 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.