How can we naturally order and organize graph Laplacian eigenvectors?

Abstract

When attempting to develop wavelet transforms for graphs and networks, some researchers have used graph Laplacian eigenvalues and eigenvectors in place of the frequencies and complex exponentials in the Fourier theory for regular lattices in the Euclidean domains. This viewpoint, however, has a fundamental flaw: on a general graph, the Laplacian eigenvalues cannot be interpreted as the frequencies of the corresponding eigenvectors. In this paper, we discuss this important problem further and propose a new method to organize those eigenvectors by defining and measuring "natural" distances between eigenvectors using the Ramified Optimal Transport Theory followed by embedding them into a low-dimensional Euclidean domain. We demonstrate its effectiveness using a synthetic graph as well as a dendritic tree of a retinal ganglion cell of a mouse.