Multi-Community Spectral Clustering for Geometric Graphs

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the soft geometric block model (SGBM) with a fixed number $k \geq 2$ of homogeneous communities in the dense regime, and we introduce a spectral clustering algorithm for community recovery on graphs generated by this model. Given such a graph, the algorithm produces an embedding into $\mathbb{R}^{k-1}$ using the eigenvectors associated with the $k-1$ eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of the graph that are closest to a value determined by the parameters of the model. It then applies $k$-means clustering to the embedding. We prove weak consistency and show that a simple local refinement step ensures strong consistency. A key ingredient is an application of a non-standard version of Davis-Kahan theorem to control eigenspace perturbations when eigenvalues are not simple. We also analyze the limiting spectrum of the adjacency matrix, using a combination of combinatorial and matrix techniques.