Aligning the Spectrum: Hybrid Graph Pre-training and Prompt Tuning across Homophily and Heterophily

Haitong Luo, Suhang Wang, Weiyao Zhang, Ruiqi Meng, Xuying Meng, Yujun Zhang

Main figure for Aligning the Spectrum: Hybrid Graph Pre-training and Prompt Tuning across Homophily and Heterophily

Abstract

Graph ``pre-training and prompt-tuning'' aligns downstream tasks with pre-trained objectives to enable efficient knowledge transfer under limited supervision. However, current methods typically rely on single-filter backbones (e.g., low-pass), whereas real-world graphs exhibit inherent spectral diversity. Our theoretical Spectral Specificity principle reveals that effective knowledge transfer requires alignment between pre-trained spectral filters and the intrinsic spectrum of downstream graphs. This identifies two fundamental limitations: (1) Knowledge Bottleneck: single-filter models suffer from irreversible information loss by suppressing signals from other frequency bands (e.g., high-frequency); (2) Utilization Bottleneck: spectral mismatches between pre-trained filters and downstream spectra lead to significant underutilization of pre-trained knowledge. To bridge this gap, we propose HS-GPPT. We utilize a hybrid spectral backbone to construct an abundant knowledge basis. Crucially, we introduce Spectral-Aligned Prompt Tuning to actively align the downstream graph's spectrum with diverse pre-trained filters, facilitating comprehensive knowledge utilization across both homophily and heterophily. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness under both transductive and inductive learning settings.

Benchmark Results

Tested on 4 datasets 11 baseline values reported too low

Tables show presented results in global context (best 3 papers + GCN + MLP).

Heterophilic Graphs

#ModelAccuracy ↑Paper
1
P^2GNN
0.9672 ±0.0147
2
DoG
0.9660 ±0.0210
3
GPF-plus
0.9583 ±0.0419
34
MLP
0.9230 ±0.0070
53
GraphSAGE
0.9000 ±0.0365
211
GAT
actual #211 vs paper #621 410 places worse
0.8162 ±0.0645
best reported
actual #211 vs paper #621 410 places worse
paper 0.2144
paper 0.2144 Δ at pub 0.6018
257
GCN
actual #257 vs paper #620 363 places worse
0.7933 ±0.0447
best reported
actual #257 vs paper #620 363 places worse
paper 0.2506
best at pub: Graph Wave Networks (WWW 2025)
paper 0.2506 Δ at pub 0.5427
304
DGI
actual #304 vs paper #617 313 places worse
0.7581 ±0.0503
best reported
actual #304 vs paper #617 313 places worse
paper 0.3031
453
TFE-GNN
actual #453 vs paper #613 160 places worse
0.6380 ±0.0111
best reported
actual #453 vs paper #613 160 places worse
paper 0.3730
paper 0.3730 Δ today 0.2650
550
HS-GPPT
0.5724
This paper
586
PolyGCL
0.4913
This paper
616
GPrompt
actual #616 vs paper #622 6 places worse
0.3325 ±0.4011
best reported
actual #616 vs paper #622 6 places worse
paper 0.1755
best at pub: ProG: A Graph Prompt Learning Benchmark (NeurIPS 2024)

Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance.

paper 0.1755 Δ at pub 0.1570
617
All-In-One
actual #617 vs paper #623 6 places worse
0.3153 ±0.1314
best reported
actual #617 vs paper #623 6 places worse
paper 0.1492

Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance.

paper 0.1492 Δ today 0.1661
619
SimGRACE
0.2833
This paper
620
ProNoG
0.2627
This paper
#ModelAccuracy ↑Paper
1
P^2GNN
0.9541 ±0.0272
2
ACM-GCN
0.9480 ±0.0380
3
RF-GCN
0.9429
24
MLP
0.9136 ±0.0070
138
SAGE
0.8269
158
GAT
actual #158 vs paper #581 423 places worse
0.8190 ±0.0540
best reported
actual #158 vs paper #581 423 places worse
paper 0.1531
paper 0.1531 Δ at pub 0.6659
170
GCN
actual #170 vs paper #581 411 places worse
0.8082 ±0.0360
best reported
actual #170 vs paper #581 411 places worse
paper 0.1835
paper 0.1835 Δ at pub 0.6247
350
DGI
actual #350 vs paper #581 231 places worse
0.6335
best reported
actual #350 vs paper #581 231 places worse
paper 0.1650
445
TFE-GNN
actual #445 vs paper #554 109 places worse
0.5370 ±0.0107
best reported
actual #445 vs paper #554 109 places worse
paper 0.3950
paper 0.3950 Δ today 0.1420
513
GraphCL
actual #513 vs paper #581 68 places worse
0.4722 ±0.0450
best reported
actual #513 vs paper #581 68 places worse
paper 0.1826
paper 0.1826 Δ at pub 0.2896
563
GPPT
actual #563 vs paper #581 18 places worse
0.3568 ±0.0963
best reported
actual #563 vs paper #581 18 places worse
paper 0.1529
paper 0.1529 Δ today 0.2039
573
All-In-One
actual #573 vs paper #581 8 places worse
0.2667 ±0.1242
best reported
actual #573 vs paper #581 8 places worse
paper 0.1341

Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance.

paper 0.1341 Δ today 0.1326
577
PolyGCL
0.2268
This paper
578
ProNoG
0.1987
This paper
579
SimGRACE
0.1904
This paper
580
GPF-plus
0.1891
This paper

Heterophily Benchmark

#ModelAccuracy ↑Paper
1
Dir-Poly
0.9451 ±0.0022
2
D-CDE
0.9387 ±0.0041
3
LargeScaleNet
0.9358 ±0.0024
26
GraphSAGE
0.9106 ±0.0027
77
GCN
actual #77 vs paper #226 149 places worse
0.8272 ±0.0082
best reported
actual #77 vs paper #226 149 places worse
paper 0.1491
paper 0.1491 Δ at pub 0.6781
83
GAT
actual #83 vs paper #227 144 places worse
0.8145 ±0.0009
best reported
actual #83 vs paper #227 144 places worse
paper 0.1367
paper 0.1367 Δ at pub 0.6720 Δ today 0.6778
135
MLP
0.6665 ±0.0047
196
DGI
actual #196 vs paper #229 33 places worse
0.4204 ±0.0094
best reported
actual #196 vs paper #229 33 places worse
paper 0.0710
207
HS-GPPT
0.3520
This paper
213
TFE-GNN
0.3155
This paper
228
GraphCL
0.0961
This paper
229
ProNoG
0.0784
This paper
230
GPPT
0.0666
This paper
231
SimGRACE
0.0635
This paper
232
PolyGCL
0.0528
This paper
233
GPrompt
0.0522
This paper
234
GPF-plus
0.0383
This paper
235
All-In-One
0.0275
This paper
#ModelAccuracy ↑Paper
1
UniGAP
0.6375 ±0.0110
2
H2GCN + HalfHop
0.5961 ±0.0100
3
GraphSAGE + HalfHop
0.5897 ±0.0150
12
SAGE
0.5569 ±0.0023
14
GAT
actual #14 vs paper #210 196 places worse
0.5559 ±0.0027
best reported
actual #14 vs paper #210 196 places worse
paper 0.1827
24
GCN
actual #24 vs paper #207 183 places worse
0.5411 ±0.0034
best reported
actual #24 vs paper #207 183 places worse
paper 0.1911
84
MLP
0.5058
201
GPPT
actual #201 vs paper #206 5 places worse
0.2427 ±0.0374
best reported
actual #201 vs paper #206 5 places worse
paper 0.1947
paper 0.1947 Δ today 0.0480
202
ProNoG
actual #202 vs paper #206 4 places worse
0.2326 ±0.0242
best reported
actual #202 vs paper #206 4 places worse
paper 0.1963
paper 0.1963 Δ today 0.0363
204
All-In-One
actual #204 vs paper #210 6 places worse
0.2282 ±0.0609
best reported
actual #204 vs paper #210 6 places worse
paper 0.1819

Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance.

paper 0.1819 Δ today 0.0463
206
HS-GPPT
0.1972
This paper
207
TFE-GNN
0.1939
This paper
208
PolyGCL
0.1874
This paper
209
GraphCL
0.1853
This paper
210
GPF-plus
0.1833
This paper
211
SimGRACE
0.1761
This paper
212
GPrompt
0.1735
This paper
213
DGI
0.1485
This paper
SOTA performance (not significantly different from the best) Proposed method (this paper) Baseline / comparison (this paper) Global context (other papers) Best at pub — reported result worse than the best known when published (best reported in green) Best today — OK at publication; today's leaderboard best is elsewhere