Forman–Ricci communicability curvature of graphs and networks

Abstract Geometric parameters in general and curvature in particular play a fundamental role in our understanding of the structure and functioning of real-world networks. Here, the discretisation of the Ricci curvature proposed by Forman is adapted to capture the global influence of the network topology on individual edges of a graph. This is implemented mathematically by assigning communicability distances to edges in the Forman–Ricci definition of curvature. We study analytically both the edge communicability curvature and the global graph curvature and give mathematical characterisations of them. The Forman–Ricci communicability curvature is interpreted ‘physically‘ on the basis of a non-conservative diffusion process taking place on the graph. We then solve analytically a toy model that allows us to understand the fundamental differences between edges with positive and negative Forman–Ricci communicability curvature. We complete the work by analysing three examples of applications of this new graph-theoretic invariant on real-world networks: (i) the network of airport flight connections in the USA, (ii) the neuronal network of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans and (iii) the collaboration network of authors in computational geometry, where we strengthen the many potentials of this new measure for the analysis of complex systems.