Ricci Curvature on Polyhedral Surfaces via Optimal Transportation

The problem of correctly defining geometric objects, such as the curvature, is a hard one in discrete geometry. In 2009, Ollivier defined a notion of curvature applicable to a wide category of measured metric spaces, in particular to graphs. He named it coarse Ricci curvature because it coincides, u...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Benoît Loisel, Pascal Romon
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2014-03-01
Series:Axioms
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/2075-1680/3/1/119
Description
Summary:The problem of correctly defining geometric objects, such as the curvature, is a hard one in discrete geometry. In 2009, Ollivier defined a notion of curvature applicable to a wide category of measured metric spaces, in particular to graphs. He named it coarse Ricci curvature because it coincides, up to some given factor, with the classical Ricci curvature, when the space is a smooth manifold. Lin, Lu and Yau and Jost and Liu have used and extended this notion for graphs, giving estimates for the curvature and, hence, the diameter, in terms of the combinatorics. In this paper, we describe a method for computing the coarse Ricci curvature and give sharper results, in the specific, but crucial case of polyhedral surfaces.
ISSN:2075-1680