Curvature and higher order Buser inequalities for the graph connection Laplacian

Abstract

We study the eigenvalues of the connection Laplacian on a graph with an orthogonal group or unitary group signature. We establish higher order Buser type inequalities, i.e., we provide upper bounds for eigenvalues in terms of Cheeger constants in the case of nonnegative Ricci curvature. In this process, we discuss the concepts of Cheeger type constants and a discrete Ricci curvature for connection Laplacians and study their properties systematically. The Cheeger constants are defined as mixtures of the expansion rate of the underlying graph and the frustration index of the signature. The discrete curvature, which can be computed efficiently via solving semidefinite programming problems, has a characterization by the heat semigroup for functions combined with a heat semigroup for vector fields on the graph.