Centrality measures for node-weighted networks via line graphs and the matrix exponential

This paper is concerned with the identification of important nodes in node-weighted graphs by applying matrix functions, in particular the matrix exponential. Many tools that use an adjacency matrix for a graph have been developed to study the importance of the nodes in unweighted or edge-weighted networks. However, adjacency matrices for node-weighted graphs have not received much attention. The present paper proposes using a line graph associated with a node-weighted graph to construct an edge-weighted graph that can be analyzed with available methods. Both undirected and directed graphs with positive node weights are considered. We show that when the weight of a node increases, the importance of this node in the graph increases as well, provided that the adjacency matrix is suitably scaled. Applications to real-life problems are presented.