Community detection of undirected hypergraphs by Ricci flow.

Abstract

Community detection in hypergraphs is both instrumental for functional module identification and intricate due to higher-order interactions among nodes. We define a hypergraph Ricci flow that directly operates on higher-order interactions of undirected hypergraphs and proves the long-time existence of the flow. Building on this theoretical foundation, we develop HyperRCD, a Ricci-flow-based community detection approach that deforms hyperedge weights through curvature-driven evolution, which provides an effective mathematical representation of higher-order interactions mediated by weighted hyperedges between nodes. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world hypergraphs demonstrate that HyperRCD exhibits remarkable enhanced robustness to topological variations and competitive performance across diverse datasets.