ON EVOLUTION PDES ON CO-EVOLVING GRAPHS

We provide a well-posedness theory for a class of nonlocal continuity equations on co-evolving graphs. We describe the connection among vertices through an edge weight function and we let it evolve in time, coupling its dynamics with the dynamics on the graph. This is relevant in applications to opinion dynamics and transportation networks. Existence and uniqueness of suitably defined solutions is obtained by exploiting the Banach fixed-point theorem. We consider different time scales for the evolution of the weight function: faster and slower than the flow defined on the graph. The former leads to graphs whose weight functions depend nonlocally on the density configuration at the vertices, while the latter induces static graphs. Furthermore, we prove a discrete-to-continuum limit for the PDEs under study as the number of vertices converges to infinity.