“…Recently, Finski [14,15] obtained, by a different method, a slightly weaker version of Theorem 1.1 in the case of the square lattice quadrangulations of Riemann surfaces with Neumann boundary conditions and cone angles restricted to integer multiples of π. For other related recent work, see [17,26,27,29,10] Theorem 1.1 above is both sharper and more general than the previous results, and we propose a new, relatively short and elementary proof. The idea is similar to that used by Chinta-Jorgenson-Karlsson [5,6] and Friedli [16] who studied the square lattice Laplacians on a torus: we use an integral representation for log det ∆ Ω δ ,ϕ in terms of theta function and then break the integral into parts that we analyze separately.…”