A short remark on the surjectivity of the combinatorial Laplacian on infinite graphs (Q326731)

A set \(G\) is said to be a graph if \(G\) is a pair \((V, E)\), where \(V\) is a set of vertices and \(E\subseteq V \times V\) is a set of edges. Two vertices \(v,w\in V\) of \(G\) are said to be adjacent (briefly, \(v\simeq w\)) if \((v,w)\) is an edge of \(G\). Moreover, a graph \(G\) is said to be locally finite, if for every vertex \(v\) of \(G\) the number \(\mathrm{deg}(v)\) of adjacent vertices is finite. In particular, the graph \(G\) is connected if, for any pair of different vertices \(v,w\) there exists a finite number of edges \((v_0, v_1),\dots, (v_{n-1}, v_n)\) of \(G\) with \(v\in \{v_0, v_n\}\) and \(w\in\{v_0, v_n\}\). Finally, \(G\) is simplicial if it does not have any loops, i.e., \((v, v)\) is not an edge of \(G\) for any vertex \(v\), and \(G\) is undirected if \((w, v)\) is an edge of \(G\) whenever \((v,w)\) is an edge of G. In the paper of \textit{T. Ceccherini-Silberstein} et al. [Enseign. Math. (2) 58, No. 1--2, 125--130 (2012; Zbl 1267.05182)], the authors showed that on a connected locally finite simplicial undirected graph \(G\) with a countably infinite vertex set \(V\), the combinatorial Laplacian \(\Delta_G : {\mathbb R}^V \to {\mathbb R}^V\) on the real-valued functions on \(V\), defined by \[ \Delta_Gf(v)=f(v)-\frac{1}{\deg(v)}\sum_{v\simeq w} f(w)\quad\text{for all }v\in V, \] is surjective. In the paper under review, the author gives a short proof of the surjectivity of the combinatorial Laplacian on a connected locally finite undirected simplicial graph G with countably infinite vertex set \(V\). Actually, he shows that every linear operator on \({\mathbb K}^V\) (where \({\mathbb K}\) denotes the real or complex field) which has finite hopping range and satisfies the pointwise maximum principle is surjective.