Discrete-to-Continuous Extensions: piecewise multilinear extension, min-max theory and spectral theory

Abstract: We introduce the homogeneous and piecewise multilinear extensions and the eigenvalue problem for locally Lipschitz function pairs, in order to develop a systematic framework for relating discrete and continuous min-max problems. This also enables us to investigate spectral properties for pairs of $p$-homogeneous functions and to propose a critical point theory for zero-homogeneous functions. The main contributions are: (1) We provide several min-max relations between an original discrete formulation and its piecewise multilinear extension. We introduce the concept of perfect domain pairs to view comonotonicity on vectors as an extension of inclusion chains on sets. The piecewise multi-linear extension is (slice-)rank preserving, which closely relates to Tao's lemma on diagonal tensors. More discrete-to-continuous equalities are obtained, including a general form involving log-concave polynomials. And by employing these fundamental correspondences, we get further results and applications on tensors, Tur\'an's problem, signed (hyper-)graphs, etc. (2) We derive the mountain pass characterization, linking theorems, nodal domain inequalities, inertia bounds, duality theorems and distribution of eigenvalues for pairs of $p$-homogeneous functions. We establish a new property on the subderivative of a convex function which relates to the Gauss map of the graph of the convex function. Based on these fundamental results, we can analyze the structure of eigenspaces in depth. For example, we show a simple one-to-one correspondence between the nonzero eigenvalues of the vertex p-Laplacian and the edge $p^*$-Laplacian of a graph. We also apply the theory to Cheeger inequalities and $p$-Laplacians on oriented hypergraphs and simplicial complexes. Also, the first nonlinear analog of Huang's approach for hypergraphs is provided.