Combinatorial Ricci Curvature for Polyhedral Surfaces and Posets

Abstract: The combinatorial Ricci curvature of Forman, which is defined at the edges of a CW complex, and which makes use of only the face relations of the cells in the complex, does not satisfy an analog of the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem, and does not behave analogously to smooth surfaces with respect to negative curvature. We extend this curvature to vertices and faces in such a way that the problems with combinatorial Ricci curvature are mostly resolved. The discussion is stated in terms of ranked posets.