Commuting projections on graphs

Abstract

For a given (connected) graph, we consider vector spaces of (discrete) functions defined on its vertices and its edges. These two spaces are related by a discrete gradient operator, Grad and its adjoint, ₋Div, referred to as (negative) discrete divergence. We also consider a coarse graph obtained by aggregation of vertices of the original one. Then a coarse vertex space is identified with the subspace of piecewise constant functions over the aggregates. We consider the ℓ 2 -projection Q H onto the space of these piecewise constants. In the present paper, our main result is the construction of a projection π H from the original edge-space onto a properly constructed coarse edge-space associated with the edges of the coarse graph. The projections π H and Q H commute with the discrete divergence operator, i.e., we have div π H = Q H div. The respective pair of coarse edge-space and coarse vertexspace offer the potential to construct two-level, and by recursion, multilevel methods for the mixed formulation of the graph Laplacian which utilizes the discrete divergence operator. The performance of one two-level method with overlapping Schwarz smoothing and correction based on the constructed coarse spaces for solving such mixed graph Laplacian systems is illustrated on a number of graph examples.