By studying the heat semigroup, we prove Li-Yau type estimates for bounded and positive solutions of the heat equation on graphs, under the assumption of the curvature-dimension inequality $CDE'(n,0)$, which can be consider as a notion of curvature for graphs. Furthermore, we derive that if a graph has non-negative curvature then it has the volume doubling property, from this we can prove the Gaussian estimate for heat kernel, and then Poincar\'{e} inequality and Harnack inequality. As a consequence, we obtain that the dimension of space of harmonic functions on graphs with polynomial growth is finite, which original is a conjecture of Yau on Riemannian manifold proved by Colding and Minicozzi. Under the assumption of positive curvature on graphs, we derive the Bonnet-Myers type theorem that the diameter of graphs is finite and bounded above in terms of the positive curvature by proving some Log Sobolev inequalities.

The spectral radius of a graph is the largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of the graph. Let T(n,D
l) be the tree which minimizes the spectral radius of all trees of order n with exactly l vertices of maximum degree D
. In this paper, T(n,D
l) is determined for D=3, and for l<= 3 and n large enough. It is proven that for sufficiently large n, T(n, 3, l) is a caterpillar with (almost) uniformly distributed legs, T(n,D
2) is a dumbbell, and T(n,
D,3) is a tree consisting of three distinct stars of order D
connected by three disjoint paths of (almost) equal length from their centers to a common vertex. The unique tree with the largest spectral radius among all such trees is also determined. These extend earlier results of Lov´asz and Pelik´an, Simi´c and To˘si´c, Wu, Yuan and Xiao, and Xu, Lin and Shu.

We introduce the notion of Bonnet-Myers and Lichnerowicz sharpness in the Ollivier Ricci curvature sense. Our main result is a classification of all self-centered Bonnet-Myers sharp graphs (hypercubes, cocktail party graphs, even-dimensional demi-cubes, Johnson graphs , the Gosset graph J(2n, n) and suitable Cartesian products). We also present a purely combinatorial reformulation of this result. We show that Bonnet-Myers sharpness implies Lichnerowicz sharpness and classify all distance-regular Lichnerowicz sharp graphs under the additional condition θ_1=b_1-1. We also relate Bonnet-Myers sharpness to an upper bound of Bakry-Émery ∞-curvature, which motivates a general conjecture about Bakry-Émery ∞-curvature.