An estimate of the first non-zero eigenvalue of the Laplacian by the Ricci curvature on edges of graphs

Abstract

We define the distance between edges of graphs and study the coarse Ricci curvature on edges. We consider the Laplacian on edges based on the Jost-Horak's definition of the Laplacian on simplicial complexes. As one of our main results, we obtain an estimate of the first non-zero eigenvalue of the Laplacian by the Ricci curvature for a regular graph.