Abstract

This study introduces the Lower Ricci Curvature (LRC), a novel, scalable, and scale-free discrete curvature designed to enhance community detection in networks. Addressing the computational challenges posed by existing curvature-based methods, LRC offers a streamlined approach with linear computational complexity, which makes it well suited for large-scale network analysis. We further develop an LRC-based preprocessing method that effectively augments popular community detection algorithms. Through applications on multiple real-world datasets, including the NCAA football league network, the DBLP collaboration network, the Amazon product co-purchasing network, and the YouTube social network, we demonstrate the efficacy of our method in significantly improving the performance of various community detection algorithms.