Spectrally positive Bakry-\'Emery Ricci curvature on graphs

We investigate analytic and geometric implications of non-constant Ricci curvature bounds. We prove a Lichnerowicz eigenvalue estimate and finiteness of the fundamental group assuming that $L+2 Ric$ is a positive operator where $L$ is the graph Laplacian. Assuming that the negative part of the Ricci curvature is small in Kato sense, we prove diameter bounds, elliptic Harnack inequality and Buser inequality. This article seems to be the first one establishing these results while allowing for some negative curvature.