On the Sum of Ricci-Curvatures for Weighted Graphs

Abstract: In this paper, we generalize Lin-Lu-Yau's Ricci curvature to weighted graphs and give a simple limit-free definition. We prove two extremal results on the sum of Ricci curvatures for weighted graph. A weighted graph $G=(V,E,d)$ is an undirected graph $G=(V,E)$ associated with a distance function $d\colon E\to [0,\infty)$. By redefining the weights if possible, without loss of generality, we assume that the shortest weighted distance between $u$ and $v$ is exactly $d(u,v)$ for any edge $uv$. Now consider a random walk whose transitive probability from an vertex $u$ to its neighbor $v$ (a jump move along the edge $uv$) is proportional to $w_{uv}:=F(d(u,v))/d(u,v)$ for some given function $F(\bullet)$. We first generalize Lin-Lu-Yau's Ricci curvature definition to this weighted graph and give a simple limit-free representation of $\kappa(x, y)$ using a so called $\ast$-coupling functions. The total curvature $K(G)$ is defined to be the sum of Ricci curvatures over all edges of $G$. We proved the following theorems: if $F(\bullet)$ is a decreasing function, then $K(G)\geq 2|V| -2|E|$; if $F(\bullet)$ is an increasing function, then $K(G)\leq 2|V| -2|E|$. Both equalities hold if and only if $d$ is a constant function plus the girth is at least $6$. In particular, these imply a Gauss-Bonnet theorem for (unweighted) graphs with girth at least $6$, where the graph Ricci curvature is defined geometrically in terms of optimal transport.