Subgraph densities in Markov spaces

We generalize subgraph densities, arising in dense graph limit theory, to Markov spaces (symmetric measures on the square of a standard Borel space). More generally, we define an analogue of the set of homomorphisms in the form of a measure on maps of a finite graph into a Markov space. The existence of such homomorphism measures is not always guaranteed, but can be established under rather natural smoothness conditions on the Markov space and sparseness conditions on the graph. This continues a direction in graph limit theory in which such measures are viewed as limits of graph sequences. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.