cs.LGMay 29, 2026

A Topological Characterization of Graph Neural Networks via Stochastic Block Model Embeddings on the n-Sphere

Authors: Gopal Anantharaman

Organizations: KnotTheory.ai Inc. · Dept. of Mathematics, Emporia State University

Abstract

We propose a topological framework for comparing trained Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) by mapping the Stochastic Block Models (SBMs) induced on the graphon-signal space of a Message Passing Neural Network (MPNN) onto the unit nn-sphere \spheren1Rn\sphere^{n-1}\subset\R^n. The construction rests on three classical pillars: the \emph{compactness} of the cut-distance graphon space (\Wo,\cutdist)(\Wo,\cutdist) \citep{lovasz2006limits,lovasz2012large}, the Frieze--Kannan \emph{weak regularity lemma} together with its graphon-signal extension due to \citet{levie2023graphon}, and the Lipschitz continuity of MPNNs with respect to the cut-distance. We show that, for any prescribed tolerance ε>0\varepsilon>0, a trained MPNN ΦΦ acting on a sufficiently large graph factors (up to ε\varepsilon) through a step-graphon-signal of bounded complexity, and we construct an explicit measure-preserving map Ψn ⁣:[0,1]\spheren1Ψ_n\colon[0,1]\to\sphere^{n-1} that places the SBM regions on disjoint spherical caps. This produces a problem-agnostic, low-dimensional ``fingerprint'' of a trained GNN that is amenable to visual inspection and to nearest-neighbour search across model zoos, enabling \emph{transfer-learning candidate retrieval} without retraining. We discuss the obstruction posed by concentration of measure in high dimension -- a phenomenon directly relevant to LLM-scale embeddings. We close with five concrete future research directions: hyperbolic and Grassmannian alternatives to the spherical model, Gromov--Wasserstein distances on graphon-signals as an isometry-free alternative to the nn-sphere map, an information-geometric (Fisher) reformulation of the SBM manifold, persistent-homology fingerprints of layer-wise embedding clouds, and a spectral-distance baseline derived from the graphon eigendecomposition.

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