Brownian Loops, Singular Homology, and Asymptotic Cycles

Abstract

Let $M$ be a closed connected Riemannian manifold. A continuous semimartingale segment can be closed by a Borel family of paths of uniformly bounded length, producing a singular homology class $H_t\in H_1(M;\mathbb{R})$. For every linear choice of smooth closed representatives of $H^1(M;\mathbb{R})$, the corresponding Stratonovich homology differs from $H_t$ by a uniformly bounded term, almost surely and uniformly in time. The classes $H_t$ are additive under time shift up to a uniformly bounded error. For Brownian motion this comparison yields the Gaussian central limit theorem with covariance given by the normalized Hodge inner product, a functional central limit theorem for the polygonal interpolation of the closed homology classes, and the almost sure limit $H_t/t\to 0$. For elliptic diffusions, the large-deviation principle of Galkin--Mariani passes to $H_T/T$ with the same rate function. The construction uses Schwartzman's closing procedure and is independent, at these asymptotic scales, of the chosen bounded closing family.

Supersedes arXiv:2312.13215. The earlier article incorrectly applied the planar Brownian winding time-change argument and obtained a Cauchy limit. The present paper gives the correct Gaussian limit and a substantially revised geometric treatment of Brownian homology and asymptotic cycles