Discrete curvature on graphs from the effective resistance
Abstract
This article introduces a new approach to discrete curvature based on the concept of effective resistances. We propose a curvature on the nodes and links of a graph and present the evidence for their interpretation as a curvature. Notably, we find a relation to a number of well-established discrete curvatures (Ollivier, Forman, combinatorial curvature) and show evidence for convergence to continuous curvature in the case of Euclidean random graphs. Being both efficient to calculate and highly amenable to theoretical analysis, these resistance curvatures have the potential to shed new light on the theory of discrete curvature and its many applications in mathematics, network science, data science and physics.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2201.06385,
title = {Discrete curvature on graphs from the effective resistance},
author = {Karel Devriendt and Renaud Lambiotte},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.06385},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
37 pages, 7 figures. Updates in this version: Section 3.2 added, Appendix B added, Figure 3 extended, Proof of Proposition 2 corrected