The Ricci flow with prescribed curvature on graphs

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the Ricci flow with prescribed curvature on the finite graph $G=(V,E)$. For any $e$ in $E$, $$\frac{dω(t,e)}{dt} = -(κ(t,e)-κ^*(e))ω(t,e), t > 0,$$ where $ω$ is the weight function, $κ$ is Lin-Lu-Yau Ricci curvature, and $κ^*$ is the prescribed curvature. By imposing invariance of the graph distance with respect to time $t$, the Ricci flow introduced above characterizes the weight evolution governed by the Lin-Lu-Yau curvature. We first establish the existence and uniqueness of the solution to this equation on general graphs. Furthermore, for graphs with girth of at least 6, we prove that the Ricci flow converges exponentially to weights of $κ^*$ if and only if $κ^*$ is attainable (namely, there exist weights realizing $κ^*$). In particular, we prove that the weights for constant curvature exist if and only if $$\max_{\emptyset \neq Ω\subsetneq V} \frac{|E(Ω)|}{|Ω|} < \frac{|E|}{|V|},$$ where $E(Ω)$ denotes the set of edges within the induced subgraph of $Ω$, and $|A|$ is the cardinality of the set $A$. Viewing edge weights as metrics on surface tilings with girth of at least 5 or the duals of triangulations with vertex degrees exceeding 5, we demonstrate that our constant Lin-Lu-Yau curvature flow serves as an analog to the 2D combinatorial Ricci flow for piecewise constant curvature metrics, thereby providing an affirmative answer to Question 2 posed by Chow and Luo (J Differ Geom, 63(1) 2002).