Maximal diameter theorem for directed graphs of positive Ricci curvature
Abstract.
In a previous work, the authors [15] have introduced a Lin-Lu-Yau type Ricci curvature for directed graphs, and obtained a diameter comparison of Bonnet-Myers type. In this paper, we investigate rigidity properties for the equality case, and conclude a maximal diameter theorem of Cheng type.
Key words and phrases:
Directed graph; Ricci curvature; Comparison geometry; Diameter; Spectrum2010 Mathematics Subject Classification:
Primary 05C20, 05C12, 05C81, 53C21, 53C231. Introduction
For a Riemannian manifold of positive Ricci curvature, the Bonnet-Myers theorem asserts that its diameter is bounded from above by that of a corresponding standard sphere. Moreover, the Cheng maximal diameter theorem says that the equality in Bonnet-Myers theorem holds if and only if it is isometric the sphere. In this article, we are concerned with their discrete analogues. In [15], the authors have introduced a Lin-Lu-Yau type Ricci curvature for directed graphs, and produced a Bonnet-Myers type diameter comparison theorem. We now aim to examine its equality case. In that case, we derive several results on geometric structure, and some analytic results for the Chung Laplacian.
1.1. Main results
Recently, there are some attempts to introduce the notion of the Ricci curvature for discrete spaces, and the Ricci curvature for (undirected) graphs introduced by Lin-Lu-Yau [11] is one of the well-studied objects (see also a pioneering work of Ollivier [14]). It is well-known that a lower Ricci curvature bound of them leads us to various geometric and analytic consequences (see e.g., [1], [2], [3], [7], [9], [11], [13], [16], and so on). In [11], they have provided a discrete analogue of Bonnet-Myers theorem in Riemannian geometry. Furthermore, Cushing et al. [7] have established that of Cheng maximal diameter theorem for regular graphs. They have investigated their geometric structure in the equality case, and concluded a classification of self-centered regular graphs based on [10].
In [15], the authors have generalized the Lin-Lu-Yau Ricci curvature for directed graphs referring to the formulation of the Laplacian by Chung [5], [6], and extended the Bonnet-Myers theorem in [11] to the directed setting. The purpose of this paper is to observe rigidity phenomena in the equality case. In order to state our main results, we briefly recall some notions on directed graphs (more precisely, see Sections 2 and 3). Let denote a simple, strongly connected, finite weighted directed graph, where denotes the vertex set, and is the (non-symmetric) edge weight. We denote by the (non-symmetric) distance function on . For with , let stand for the Ricci curvature introduced in [15] (see Subsection 3.1), and set
(1.1) |
where the infimum is taken over all with . Here means that there exists a directed edge from to . Also, for , let denote the mixed asymptotic mean curvature introduced in [15] (see Subsection 3.2), and set
(1.2) |
Notice that in general. The diameter comparison in [15] can be stated as follows (see [15, Theorem 8.3], and also Theorem 3.6 below):
Theorem 1.1 ([15]).
Let denote a simple, strongly connected, finite weighted directed graph. If , then we have
(1.3) |
We study the equality case in Theorem 1.1. For with , we say that is spherically suspended with poles if the following properties hold:
-
(1)
is covered by minimal geodesics from to , namely,
-
(2)
for every minimal geodesic from to , it holds that for all with ;
-
(3)
.
One of our main theorem is the following structure theorem:
Theorem 1.2.
Let denote a simple, strongly connected, finite weighted directed graph. We assume , and the equality in (1.3) holds, namely,
(1.4) |
Then is spherically suspended with poles for any with .
Cushing et al. [7] have proved Theorem 1.2 for unweighted, undirected regular graphs (see [7, Lemma 5.3 and Theorem 5.5]).
Remark 1.3.
It seems that the method of the proof in [7] works only for regular graphs. Actually, it is based on the characterization result of the Lin-Lu-Yau Ricci curvature by the so-called Ollivier Ricci curvature with idleness parameter, which has been obtained in [4] (see the proof of [7, Lemma 5.3], and cf. [7, Remark 2.3]). We need to reconsider the method of the proof that is suitable for our setting. To overcome this issue, we refer to the proof of the Cheng maximal diameter theorem in the smooth setting. Here we recall that the Cheng maximal diameter can be proved by combining the Laplacian comparison theorem for the distance functions from poles, which leads us to the superharmonicity of the sum of them, and the minimum principle. We will prove Theorem 1.2 by verifying the minimum principle in our setting, and analyzing our Laplacian comparison (see Lemmas 4.1 and 4.2 below).
1.2. Organization
In Section 2, we will review basics of directed graphs. In Section 3, we recall the formulation of the Ricci curvature introduced in [15], and examine its properties. In Section 4, we prove Theorem 1.2. We also show that the equalities in other comparison geometric results hold under the same setting as in Theorem 1.2 (see Theorems 4.4 and 4.5). In Section 5, we will present some examples having maximal diameter.
2. Preliminaries
We here review basics and fundamental facts on directed graphs. We refer to [15].
2.1. Directed graphs
Let be a finite weighted directed graph, namely, is a finite directed graph, and is a function such that if and only if , where means as stated in the above section. We will denote by the cardinality of . The function is called the edge weight, and we write by . Note that is undirected if and only if for all , and simple if and only if for all . Also, it is called unweighted if whenever . The weighted directed graph can be written as since the full information of is included in . We use instead of as in [15].
For , its outer neighborhood , inner one , and neighborhood are defined as
respectively. The outer degree and inner one are defined as the cardinality of and , respectively. In the unweighted case, is called Eulerian if for all .
For , a sequence of vertices is said to be directed path from to if and for all , where is called its length. Further, is called strongly connected if for all , there exists a directed path from to . For strongly connected , the (non-symmetric) distance function is defined as follows: is defined to be the minimum of the length of directed paths from to . A directed path from to is called minimal geodesic when . The diameter of is defined as
For , the distance function , and the reverse one are done as
For , a function is said to be -Lipschitz if
for all . Note that is -Lipschitz, but is not always -Lipschitz. Let be the set of all -Lipschitz functions on .
2.2. Laplacian
In what follows, let be a simple, strongly connected, finite weighted directed graph. In this subsection, we recall the formulation of the Chung Laplacian introduced in [5], [6]. The transition probability kernel is defined as
where
Since is finite and strongly connected, the Perron-Frobenius theorem guarantees that there exists a unique (up to scaling) positive function such that
(2.1) |
A probability measure satisfying (2.1) is called the Perron measure.
Let stand for the Perron measure. We define the reverse transition probability kernel , and the mean transition probability kernel by
Remark 2.1.
We see that if and only if .
Remark 2.2.
Let be the set of all functions on . The Chung Laplacian is formulated by
which is symmetric with respect to .
2.3. Optimal transport theory
We review the basics of the optimal transport theory (cf. [17]). For two probability measures on , a probability measure is called a coupling of if
Let be the set of all couplings of . The Wasserstein distance from to is defined as
(2.3) |
which is a (non-symmetric) distance function on the set of all probability measures on .
The following Kantorovich-Rubinstein duality formula is well-known (cf. [17, Theorem 5.10 and Particular Cases 5.4 and 5.16]):
Proposition 2.3.
For any two probability measures on , we have
3. Curvatures
In this section, we investigate some basic properties of curvatures on directed graphs.
3.1. Ricci curvature
For , and for with , we set
where is a probability measure defined by
for the Dirac measure . The authors [15] have introduced the Ricci curvature as follows (see [15, Definition 3.6]):
which is well-defined (see [15, Lemmas 3.2 and 3.4, and Definition 3.6]). In the undirected case, this is nothing but the Lin-Lu-Yau Ricci curvature in [11].
We recall a characterization of the Ricci curvature in terms of the Chung Laplacian . Let with . The gradient operator is defined by
for . We set
We possess the following characterization, which has been obtained by Münch-Wojciechowski [13] in the undirected case (see [15, Theorem 3.10], and also [13, Theorem 2.1]):
The authors [15] have stated Proposition 3.2 without proof. For completeness, we give its proof. Proposition 3.2 is a direct consequence of the following lemma:
Lemma 3.3.
Let with , and let be a minimal geodesic from to with . We set and for some with . Then the following hold:
-
(1)
If and , then
(3.1) -
(2)
If and , then
(3.2) -
(3)
If and , then
(3.3)
Proof.
3.2. Asymptotic mean curvature
In the present subsection, we recall the notion of the asymptotic mean curvature introduced by the authors [15]. For , the asymptotic mean curvature around , and the reverse one are defined as
It holds that and in general; moreover, the equalities hold in the undirected case. In particular, they play an essential role in the directed case. For , the mixed asymptotic mean curvature is defined by
We have ; moreover, the equality holds in the undirected case.
3.3. Products
We consider the weighted Cartesian product of , and another simple, strongly connected, finite weighted directed graph . For two parameters , the -weighted Cartesian product of and is defined as follows: Its vertex set is , and its edge weight is
for , where denotes the vertex weight at on . The distance function should be
(3.4) |
for the distance functions and on and , respectively.
Let . Let denote the asymptotic mean curvature around , the reverse one, the mixed asymptotic mean curvature over , respectively. Also, let be the asymptotic mean curvature around , the reverse one, the mixed asymptotic mean curvature over , respectively. We summarize formulas for asymptotic mean curvature (see [15, Proposition 5.5]):
Proposition 3.4 ([15]).
(3.5) |
3.4. Comparison geometric results
In this subsection, we review comparison geometric results under our lower Ricci curvature bound. We begin with the diameter comparison (see [15, Theorem 8.3], and also [11, Theorem 4.1] in the undirected case).
Proof of Theorem 1.1.
Remark 3.7.
We next discuss the Laplacian comparison (see [15, Theorem 1.1], and also [13, Theorem 4.1] in the undirected case).
Proof.
4. Proof of the main results
In this section, we prove our main theorems.
4.1. Structure results
A function is said to be superharmonic when
(4.1) |
over . We first show the following minimum principle (cf. [8, Proposition 1.39]):
Lemma 4.1.
Any superharmonic functions must be constant.
Proof.
Let be superharmonic. Set
Since is finite, is non-empty. We first show that if , then . By (4.1) and Remark 2.1, we have
In particular, all equalities hold, and hence .
We now prove . Fix . We can take since . We also take a minimal geodesic from to . From the above argument, we see . Furthermore, by induction, we conclude . Thus , and hence .
We next deduce the following superharmonicity:
Lemma 4.2.
Under the same setting as in Theorem 1.2, for any with , the function is superharmonic.
Proof.
We further show the following:
Lemma 4.3.
Let with , and let be a minimal geodesic from to with . Set and for some with . If , then .
Proof.
We are now in a position to prove Theorem 1.2.
4.2. Sharpness of comparison geometric results
Here we show that under the same setting as in Theorem 1.2, the equalities in other comparison geometric results hold. First, we mention the Laplacian comparison:
Theorem 4.4.
We next discuss the eigenvalue comparison.
Theorem 4.5.
Proof.
5. Examples
In this last section, we aim to present (purely) directed graphs having maximal diameter. For , we say that has constant Ricci curvature if for all edges . In that case we denote by .
5.1. Directed complete graphs
For , we consider the unweighted directed complete graph with vertices, denoted by (see Figure 1).

It is easy to see that
(5.1) |
for all and . The authors [15] have calculated the Ricci curvature of the edges of as follows (see [15, Example 4.1]): (1) ; (2) if , then we have
(3) if , then we have
(4) if , then we have
In particular,
(5.2) |
By (5.1), (5.2), the equality (1.4) in holds on if and only if . Actually, is not spherically suspended for although it is covered by minimal geodesics from to .
Remark 5.1.
It is remarkable that undirected (usual) complete graph with vertices does not have maximal diameter.
5.2. Directed triforce graphs
We next observe the unweighted directed triforce graph (see Figure 2).

We verify that , and has maximal diameter as follows: It is trivial that
(5.3) |
We calculate the asymptotic mean curvature. Since is Eulerian, the formula (2.2) implies
(5.4) |
for instance. From straightforward computations, it follows that
(5.5) |
for all . Let us check that . To do so, by the symmetry, it is enough to calculate and . We here only present the calculation for , and the others are left to the reader. By (5.4),
We define a coupling of by
Then one can prove by (2.3), and hence . To check the opposite inequality, we define a -Lipschitz function by
Applying Proposition 2.3 to the function , we obtain . This proves . Notice that in the verification of , we use
Also, in the verification of ,
Thus we arrive at
(5.6) |
Combining (5.3), (5.5) and (5.6), we conclude that has maximal diameter.
Remark 5.2.
We consider the unweighted directed multi triforce graph (see Figure 3).

Then we see ; in particular, it does not have positive Ricci curvature.
5.3. Product and maximal diameter
We consider two simple, strongly connected, finite weighted directed graphs and , and also their -weighted Cartesian product . Let us denote by and the diameter of and , respectively. We also denote by and the value defined as (1.2) of and , respectively. Furthermore, We denote by and the value done by (1.1) of and , respectively.
Lemma 5.3.
Proof.
The following claim together with the observation in Subsections 5.1 and 5.2 enables us to produce new directed graphs having maximal diameter:
Theorem 5.4.
Proof.
The implication from (1) to (2) is a direct consequence of Lemma 5.3. Let us prove the opposite direction. By virtue of Lemma 5.3, the assumption, and Theorem 1.1,
(5.7) |
and hence . Similarly,
(5.8) |
and hence . It follows that . Furthermore, the inequalities in (5.7), (5.8) become equalities. Thus we conclude the desired assertion.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Professor Takashi Shioya for informing them of [12]. They are also grateful to Doctor Daisuke Kazukawa for his useful comments. The first named author was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI (19K14532). The first and second named authors were supported in part by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Discrete Geometric Analysis for Materials Design” (17H06460). The third named author was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI (19K23411).
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