Noncommutative Riemannian geometry on graphs

We show that arising out of noncommutative geometry is a natural family of edge Laplacians on the edges of a graph. The family includes a canonical edge Laplacian associated to the graph, extending the usual graph Laplacian on vertices, and we find its spectrum. We show that for a connected graph its eigenvalues are strictly positive aside from one mandatory zero mode, and include all the vertex degrees. Our edge Laplacian is not the graph Laplacian on the line graph but rather it arises as the noncommutative Laplace-Beltrami operator on differential 1-forms, where we use the language of differential algebras to functorially interpret a graph as providing a 'finite manifold structure' on the set of vertices. We equip any graph with a canonical 'Euclidean metric' and a canonical bimodule connection, and in the case of a Cayley graph we construct a metric compatible connection for the Euclidean metric. We make use of results on bimodule connections on inner calculi on algebras, which we prove, including a general relation between zero curvature and the braid relations. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.