Discrete Ollivier-Ricci curvature

Abstract

We analyze both continuous and discrete-time Ollivier-Ricci curvatures of locally-finite weighted graphs $\G$ equipped with a given distance "$\dist$" (w.r.t. which $\G$ is metrically complete) and for general random walks. We show the continuous-time Ollivier-Ricci curvature is well-defined for a large class of Markovian and non-Markovian random walks and provide a criterion for existence of continuous-time Ollivier-Ricci curvature; the said results generalize the previous rather limited constructions in the literature. In addition, important properties of both discrete-time and continuous-time Ollivier-Ricci curvatures are obtained including -- to name a few -- Lipschitz continuity, concavity properties, piece-wise regularity (piece-wise linearity in the case of linear walks) for the discrete-time Ollivier-Ricci as well as Lipschitz continuity and limit-free formulation for the continuous-time Ollivier-Ricci. these properties were previously known only for very specific distances and very specific random walks. As an application of Lipschitz continuity, we obtain existence and uniqueness of generalized continuous-time Ollivier-Ricci curvature flows. Along the way, we obtain -- by optimizing McMullen's upper bounds -- a sharp upper bound estimate on the number of vertices of a convex polytope in terms of number of its facets and the ambient dimension, which might be of independent interest in convex geometry. The said upper bound allows us to bound the number of polynomial pieces of the discrete-time Ollivier-Ricci curvature as a function of time in the time-polynomial random walk. The limit-free formulation we establish allows us to define an operator theoretic Ollivier-Ricci curvature which is a non-linear concave functional on suitable operator spaces.