Graphs, Vectors, and Matrices

Spectral Graph Theory is the interplay between linear algebra and combinatorial graph theory. One application of this interplay is a nearly linear time solver for Symmetric Diagonally Dominate systems (SDD). This seemingly restrictive class of systems has received much interest in the last 15 years. Both algorithm design theory and practical implementations have made substantial progress. There is also a growing number of problems that can be efficiently solved using SDD solvers including: image segmentation, image denoising, finding solutions to elliptic equations, computing maximum flow in a graph, graph sparsification, and graphics. All these examples can be viewed as special case of convex optimization problems.

Over the last several years there have been major breakthroughs in the design of approximation algorithms for such classic problems as finding the maximum flow in a graph. Maximum flow for undirected graphs can now be approximately solved in almost linear time. This result by researchers at Berkeley and MIT, I claim, is only the beginning of a new era in efficient algorithm design.Graph theoretic optimization problems, that have been dormant for fifty years are now seeing new and exciting algorithms. These advances have been made possible by Spectral Graph Theory, the interplay between linear algebra and combinatorial graph theory. One application of this interplay is a nearly linear time solver for Symmetric Diagonally Dominate systems (SDD). This seemingly restrictive class of linear systems has received substantial interest in the last 15 years. Both algorithm design theory and practical implementations have made major progress. Surprisingly, there is an ever growing list of problems that can be efficiently solved using SDD solvers including image segmentation, image denoising, finding solutions to elliptic equations, computing maximum flow in a graph, graph sparsification, and graphics. All these examples can be viewed as special cases of convex optimization problems that arise from graph problems. I can imagine a world where such optimization problems that seem to require at least quadratic work will all be solvable by practical algorithms guaranteed to run in near linear work and are very parallel.

The Fiedler vector of a graph, namely the eigenvector corresponding to the second smallest eigenvalue of a graph Laplacian matrix, plays an important role in spectral graph theory with applications in problems such as graph bi-partitioning and envelope reduction. Algorithms designed to estimate this quantity usually rely on a priori knowledge of the entire graph, and employ techniques such as graph sparsification and power iterations, which have obvious shortcomings in cases where the graph is unknown, or changing dynamically. In this paper, we develop a framework in which we construct a stochastic process based on a set of interacting random walks on a graph and show that a suitably scaled version of our stochastic process converges to the Fiedler vector for a sufficiently large number of walks. Like other techniques based on exploratory random walks and on-the-fly computations, such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), our algorithm overcomes challenges typically faced by power iteration based approaches. But, unlike any existing random walk based method such as MCMCs where the focus is on the leading eigenvector, our framework with interacting random walks converges to the Fiedler vector (second eigenvector). We also provide numerical results to confirm our theoretical findings on different graphs, and show that our algorithm performs well over a wide range of parameters and the number of random walks. Simulations results over time varying dynamic graphs are also provided to show the efficacy of our random walk based technique in such settings. As an important contribution, we extend our results and show that our framework is applicable for approximating not just the Fiedler vector of graph Laplacians, but also the second eigenvector of any time reversible Markov Chain kernel via interacting random walks.

The Laplacian is another important matrix associated with a graph, and the Laplacian spectrum is the spectrum of this matrix. We will consider the relationship between structural properties of a graph and the Laplacian spectrum, in a similar fashion to the spectral graph theory of previous chapters. We will meet Kirchhoff’s expression for the number of spanning trees of a graph as the determinant of the matrix we get by deleting a row and column from the Laplacian. This is one of the oldest results in algebraic graph theory. We will also see how the Laplacian can be used in a number of ways to provide interesting geometric representations of a graph. This is related to work on the Colin de Verdiere number of a graph, which is one of the most important recent developments in graph theory.

The field of mathematics that studies the relationship between algebraic structures and graphs is known as algebraic graph theory. It incorporates concepts from graph theory, which examines the characteristics and topology of graphs, with those from abstract algebra, which deals with algebraic structures such as groups, rings, and fields. If the vertex set of a graph G^ is fully made up of the zero divisors of the modular ring Zn, the graph is said to be a zero-divisor graph. If the products of two vertices are equal to zero under (modn), they are regarded as neighbors. Entropy, a notion taken from information theory and used in graph theory, measures the degree of uncertainty or unpredictability associated with a graph or its constituent elements. Entropy measurements may be used to calculate the structural complexity and information complexity of graphs. The first, second and second modified Zagrebs, general and inverse general Randics, third and fifth symmetric divisions, harmonic and inverse sum indices, and forgotten topological indices are a few topological indices that are examined in this article for particular families of zero-divisor graphs. A numerical and graphical comparison of computed topological indices over a proposed structure has been studied. Furthermore, different kinds of entropies, such as the first, second, and third redefined Zagreb, are also investigated for a number of families of zero-divisor graphs.

The influence of Miroslav Fiedler on spectral graph theory

The ability of additive manufacturing (AM) processes to produce components with virtually any geometry presents a unique challenge in terms of quantifying the dimensional quality of the part. In this paper, a novel spectral graph theory (SGT) approach is proposed for resolving the following critical quality assurance concern in AM: how to quantify the relative deviation in dimensional integrity of complex AM components. Here, the SGT approach is demonstrated for classifying the dimensional integrity of standardized test components. The SGT-based topological invariant Fiedler number (λ2) was calculated from 3D point cloud coordinate measurements and used to quantify the dimensional integrity of test components. The Fiedler number was found to differ significantly for parts originating from different AM processes (statistical significance p-val. < 1%). By comparison, prevalent dimensional integrity assessment techniques, such as traditional statistical quantifiers (such as mean and standard deviation) and examination of specific facets/landmarks failed to capture part-to-part variations, and thus proved incapable of ranking the quality of test AM components in a consistent manner. In contrast, the SGT approach was able to consistently rank the quality of the AM components with a high degree of statistical confidence independent of sampling technique used. Consequently, from a practical standpoint, the SGT approach can be a powerful tool for assessing the dimensional integrity of AM components, and thus encourage wider adoption of AM capabilities.

Spectral clustering algorithms are often used to find clusters in the community detection problem. Recently, a degree-corrected spectral clustering algorithm was proposed. However, it is only used for partitioning graphs which are generated from stochastic blockmodels. This paper studies the degree-corrected spectral clustering algorithm based on the spectral graph theory and shows that it gives a good approximation of the optimal clustering for a wide class of graphs. Moreover, we also give theoretical support for finding an appropriate degree-correction. Several numerical experiments for community detection are conducted in this paper to evaluate our method.

One of the hot research topics in propagation dynamics is identifying a set of critical nodes that can influence maximization in a complex network. The importance and dispersion of critical nodes among them are both vital factors that can influence maximization. We therefore propose a multiple influential spreaders identification algorithm based on spectral graph theory. This algorithm first quantifies the role played by the local structure of nodes in the propagation process, then classifies the nodes based on the eigenvectors of the Laplace matrix, and finally selects a set of critical nodes by the constraint that nodes in the same class are not adjacent to each other while different classes of nodes can be adjacent to each other. Experimental results on real and synthetic networks show that our algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art and classical algorithms in the SIR model.

In this dissertation I draw a connection between quantum adiabatic optimization, spectral graph theory, heat-diffusion, and sub-stochastic processes through the operators that govern these processes and their associated spectra. In particular, we study Hamiltonians which have recently become known as ``stoquastic'' or, equivalently, the generators of sub-stochastic processes. The operators corresponding to these Hamiltonians are of interest in all of the settings mentioned above. I predominantly explore the connection between the spectral gap of an operator, or the difference between the two lowest energies of that operator, and certain equilibrium behavior. In the context of adiabatic optimization, this corresponds to the likelihood of solving the optimization problem of interest. I will provide an instance of an optimization problem that is easy to solve classically, but leaves open the possibility to being difficult adiabatically. Aside from this concrete example, the work in this dissertation is predominantly mathematical and we focus on bounding the spectral gap. Our primary tool for doing this is spectral graph theory, which provides the most natural approach to this task by simply considering Dirichlet eigenvalues of subgraphs of host graphs. I will derive tight bounds for the gap of one-dimensional, hypercube, and general convex subgraphs. The techniques used will also adapt methods recently used by Andrews and Clutterbuck to prove the long-standing ``Fundamental Gap Conjecture''.

Extremal Problems in Discrete Geometry and Spectral Graph Theory

A multi-level finite element nodal ordering using algebraic graph theory

ABSTRACTThe risk of missing data and subsequent incomplete data records at wind farms increases with the number of turbines and sensors. We propose here an imputation method that blends data‐driven concepts with expert knowledge, by using the geometry of the wind farm in order to provide better estimates when performing nearest neighbor imputation. Our method relies on learning Laplacian eigenmaps out of the graph of the wind farm through spectral graph theory. These learned representations can be based on the wind farm layout only or additionally account for information provided by collected data. The related weighted graph is allowed to change with time and can be tracked in an online fashion. Application to the Westermost Rough offshore wind farm shows significant improvement over approaches that do not account for the wind farm layout information.

In large-scale applications, parts of harmonic data are inevitably lost during transmission. This study presents an approach for the recovery of missing harmonic data based on the spectral graph theory. The proposed methodology involves graph theory for constructing a Laplacian matrix and a graph signal reconstruction function, the merging <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i> -means algorithm for building a priori information model, and the accelerated segmentation Bregman iterative algorithm for solving the reconstruction function. Compared with existing methods on data recovery in power systems, the method maintains a good recovery accuracy when the data correlation of measurement units is low and the prior information is little. The proposed method has good anti-noise performances and low computational complexity. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method are verified through simulation and field recorded data.

Following this advice, we should look over the big questions, then doodle and sketch out some approaches. If you are an expert, then this is easy to do, but most people do not want to wait to become an expert before looking at interesting problems. Graph theory, our area of expertise, has many hard-to-solve questions. Some hark back to the recreational roots of the area yet still keep their mystery. These ‘‘acorns’’ can be planted on the backs of envelopes, on a blackboard, and over a coffee. Our goal is to collect some of these conjectures—arguably some of the most intriguing—in one place. We present ten conjectures in graph theory, and you can read about each one in at most ten minutes. As we live in the era of Twitter, all the conjectures we state are 140 characters or fewer (so ‘‘minute’’ here has a double meaning). We might even call these sketchy tweets, as we present examples for each conjecture that you can doodle on as you read. Hamming also references ambiguity: good researchers can work both on proving and disproving the same statement, so we approach the conjectures with an open mind. He also mentions that a good approach is to reframe the problem, and change the point of view. One example from Vizing’s Conjecture (which is discussed as our second-to-last conjecture in the following text), is the three-page paper [2] which, with a new way of thinking, reduced most of the published work of twenty years to a corollary of its main result! Given the size of modern graph theory, with its many smaller subfields (such as structural graph theory, random graphs, topological graph theory, graph algorithms, spectral graph theory, graph minors, and graph homomorphisms, to name a few), it would be impossible to list all, or even the bulk of the conjectures in the field. We are content instead to focus on a few family jewels, which have an intrinsic beauty and have provided some challenges for graph-theorists for at least two decades. There is something for everyone here, from undergraduate students taking their first course in graph theory, to seasoned researchers in the field. For additional reading on problems and conjectures in graph theory and other fields, see the Open Problem Garden maintained by IRMACS at Simon Fraser University [24]. We consider only finite and undirected graphs, with no multiple edges or loops (unless otherwise stated). We assume the reader has some basic familiarity with graphs and their terminology, including notions such as cycles, paths, complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs, vertex degrees, and connected graphs. We use the notation Cn for the cycle with n vertices, Pn for the path with n vertices, and Kn for the complete graph with n vertices. The complete bipartite graph with m and n vertices of the respective colors is denoted by Km,n. All the background we need can be found in any text in graph theory, such as those of Diestel [9] and West [41], or online (see for example [42]).