Inequalities for doubly nonnegative functions

Abstract

Let $g$ be a bounded symmetric measurable nonnegative function on $[0,1{]}^2$, and $\Vert g\Vert ={\int }_{[0,1{]}^2}g(x,y)dxdy$. For a graph $G$ with vertices $\{v_1,v_2,\dots ,v_n\}$ 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 $t(G,g)\ge {\Vert g\Vert }^{|E(G)|}$ 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.

final version