Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Natural Science and Mathematics, Mathematics

First Advisor

Paul K. Horn

Second Advisor

Jing Li

Third Advisor

Mei Yin

Fourth Advisor

Mario Lopez

Keywords

Bakry Emery curvature, Graph theory, Local-global results, Spectral graph theory

Abstract

Local-global arguments, or those which glean global insights from local information, are central ideas in many areas of mathematics and computer science. For instance, in computer science a greedy algorithm makes locally optimal choices that are guaranteed to be consistent with a globally optimal solution. On the mathematical end, global information on Riemannian manifolds is often implied by (local) curvature lower bounds. Discrete notions of graph curvature have recently emerged, allowing ideas pioneered in Riemannian geometry to be extended to the discrete setting. Bakry- Émery curvature has been one such successful notion of curvature. In this thesis we use combinatorial implications of Bakry- Émery curvature on graphs to prove a sort of local discrepancy inequality. This then allows us to derive a number of results regarding the local structure of graphs, dependent only on a curvature lower bound. For instance, it turns out that a curvature lower bound implies a nontrivial lower bound on graph connectivity. We also use these results to consider the curvature of strongly regular graphs, a well studied and important class of graphs. In this regard, we give a partial solution to an open conjecture: all SRGs satisfy the curvature condition CD(∞, 2). Finally we transition to consider a facility location problem motivated by using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to guard a border. Here, we find a greedy algorithm, acting on local geometric information, which finds a near optimal placement of base stations for the guarding of UAVs.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Alexander Lewis Stevens

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

107 pgs

Discipline

Mathematics

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