Analysis of the physical Laplacian and the heat flow on a locally finite graph (Q984770)

This paper is concerned with the recently developed theory of physical Laplacian on graphs. The author investigates the physical Laplacian on a locally finite connected graph \(G=(V,E)\) with applications to the heat flow. Due to the unboundedness of such an operator on \(\ell^2(V)\), the problem in question is more complicated than the case of the combinatorial Laplacian. The spectral analysis of the physical Laplacian operator is studied. The essential self-adjointness of the operator on \(\ell^2(V)\) is established by proving that \(\text{ker} \Delta^*_m\pm i=\{0\}.\) Here \(\Delta^*_m\) is the adjoint of the physical Laplacian operator defined on the dense subset of \(\ell^2(V)\) of functions with finite support. The heat equation \(\frac{\partial}{\partial t}u+\Delta u=0\) on \(G\) is investigated and a fundamental solution is constructed. Independently, such a construction is developed by \textit{R. K. Wojciechowski} [``Stochastic completeness of graphs'', \url{arXiv:0712.1570v2} (2007)].