Spectral Convergence of the Discrete Steklov Problem

Abstract

We study the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the Schur complement $\text{S}$ of the graph Laplacian, defined on vertices sampled from a domain with $C^2$ boundary. We use a thin boundary layer to approximate the continuum boundary as the number of vertices increases and rely on transportation theory to justify the consistency of a discrete Steklov problem. In particular, $\text{S}$ acts on vectors defined over the shrinking boundary layer but behaves asymptotically like a known operator. In this paper, we use a variational argument to determine conditions for which the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of $\text{S}$ converge to the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of a Dirichlet-to-Neumann map, and we provide evidence of this spectral convergence through a numerical example.

arXiv comment25 pages, 3 figures; the author welcomes all comments