Harmonic functions and potentials on finite or infinite networks (Q547471)

In this book a potential-theoretic style of the theory is built into the framework of finite or infinite networks. The motivation of the book is to build a function theory on networks reflecting ideas of potential theory on locally compact spaces. Applications in mind are random walks and electrical networks. A network in the book has a countable number of vertices, edges, and two vertices are associated with a non-negative number, called conductance. It has no self-loops and it is connected and locally finite. The Laplacian used is \[ \bigtriangleup f\left( x\right) =\sum_{x\sim x_{i}}t\left( x,x_{i}\right) \left( f\left( x_{i}\right) -f\left( x\right) \right), \] where \(\sim \) means that the vertices are connected and their conductance \( t\left( x,x_{i}\right) >0\). In the first part of the book, the general calculating tools like the Green formula and the minimum principle are verified. In the second part potential theory on finite networks is studied. The third part deals with the classification of infinite networks. In the fourth part the Schrödinger operator on an infinite network is studied. In the last part, the theory of polyharmonic functions on infinite trees is built. The book is written in a reader-friendly way and contains various potential-theoretic results, but one would have hoped for more references connected to the existing theory of the preceding Laplacian by other authors.