An efficient set-theoretic algorithm for high-order Forman-Ricci curvature

Differential geometric approaches are ubiquitous in several fields of mathematics, physics and engineering, and their discretizations enable the development of network-based mathematical and computational frameworks, which are essential for large-scale data science. The Forman-Ricci curvature (FRC) - a statistical measure based on Riemannian geometry and designed for networks - is known for its high capacity for extracting geometric information from complex networks. However, extracting information from dense networks is still challenging due to the combinatorial explosion of high-order network structures. Motivated by this challenge we sought a set-theoretic representation theory for high-order network cells and FRC, as well as their associated concepts and properties, which together provide an alternative and efficient formulation for computing high-order FRC in complex networks. We provide a pseudo-code, a software implementation coined FastForman, as well as a benchmark comparison with alternative implementations. Crucially, our representation theory reveals previous computational bottlenecks and also accelerates the computation of FRC. As a consequence, our findings open new research possibilities in complex systems where higher-order geometric computations are required.