Duality and Nonlinear Graph Laplacians

Abstract: We present an iterative algorithm for solving a class of \nonlinear Laplacian system of equations in $\tilde{O}(k^2m \log(kn/\epsilon))$ iterations, where $k$ is a measure of nonlinearity, $n$ is the number of variables, $m$ is the number of nonzero entries in the graph Laplacian $L$, $\epsilon$ is the solution accuracy and $\tilde{O}()$ neglects (non-leading) logarithmic terms. This algorithm is a natural nonlinear extension of the one by of Kelner et. al., which solves a linear Laplacian system of equations in nearly linear time. Unlike the linear case, in the nonlinear case each iteration takes $\tilde{O}(n)$ time so the total running time is $\tilde{O}(k^2mn \log(kn/\epsilon))$. For sparse graphs where $m = O(n)$ and fixed $k$ this nonlinear algorithm is $\tilde{O}(n^2 \log(n/\epsilon))$ which is slightly faster than standard methods for solving linear equations, which require approximately $O(n^{2.38})$ time. Our analysis relies on the construction of a nonlinear "energy function" and a nonlinear extension of the duality analysis of Kelner et. al to the nonlinear case without any explicit references to spectral analysis or electrical flows. These new insights and results provide tools for more general extensions to spectral theory and nonlinear applications.