Inequalities for Doubly Nonnegative Functions

Abstract

Let $g$ be a bounded symmetric measurable nonnegative function on $[0,1]^2$, and $\left\lVert g \right\rVert = \int_{[0,1]^2} g(x,y) dx dy$. For a graph $G$ with vertices $\{v_1,v_2,\ldots,v_n\}$ and edge set $E(G)$, we define

\[  t(G,g) \; = \;  \int_{[0,1]^n} \prod_{\{v_i,v_j\} \in E(G)} g(x_i,x_j) \: dx_1 dx_2 \cdots dx_n \; .\]

We conjecture that $t(G,g) \geq \left\lVert g \right\rVert^{|E(G)|}$ holds for any graph $G$ and any function $g$ with nonnegative spectrum.  We prove this conjecture for various graphs $G$, including complete graphs, unicyclic and bicyclic graphs, as well as graphs with $5$ vertices or less.