Can smooth graphons in several dimensions be represented by smooth graphons on $[0,1]$?

Abstract

A graphon that is defined on $[0,1]^d$ and is H\"older$(\alpha)$ continuous for some $d\ge2$ and $\alpha\in(0,1]$ can be represented by a graphon on $[0,1]$ that is H\"older$(\alpha/d)$ continuous. We give examples that show that this reduction in smoothness to $\alpha/d$ is the best possible, for any $d$ and $\alpha$; for $\alpha=1$, the example is a dot product graphon and shows that the reduction is the best possible even for graphons that are polynomials. A motivation for studying the smoothness of graphon functions is that this represents a key assumption in non-parametric statistical network analysis. Our examples show that making a smoothness assumption in a particular dimension is not equivalent to making it in any other latent dimension.