English

Curvature on Graphs via Equilibrium Measures

Combinatorics 2022-09-07 v2 Differential Geometry

Abstract

We introduce a notion of curvature on finite, combinatorial graphs. It can be easily computed by solving a linear system of equations. We show that graphs with curvature bounded below by K>0K>0 have diameter bounded by \mboxdiam(G)2/K\mbox{diam}(G) \leq 2/K (a Bonnet-Myers theorem), that \mboxdiam(G)=2/K\mbox{diam}(G) = 2/K implies that GG has constant curvature (a Cheng theorem) and that there is a spectral gap λ1K/(2n)\lambda_1 \geq K/(2n) (a Lichnerowicz theorem). It is computed for several families of graphs and often coincides with Ollivier curvature or Lin-Lu-Yau curvature. The von Neumann minimax theorem features prominently in the proofs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2202.01658,
  title  = {Curvature on Graphs via Equilibrium Measures},
  author = {Stefan Steinerberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.01658},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T09:18:08.468Z