Proposition. A massive sum rule and Foster's identity [fdip-005U]

For fixed nonnegative weights and \(m>0\), \[\sum _e w_e\frac {\partial \mathcal W}{\partial w_e} =\frac 12(n-m^2\operatorname {tr}G).\] If the positive-weight support is connected, its limit as \(m\downarrow 0\) is \((n-1)/2\). More explicitly, let \(L_w^+\) be zero on constant fields and the inverse of \(L_w\) on their orthogonal complement. The effective resistance between the endpoints of an edge is \(R_{\mathrm {eff}}(e)=d_e^TL_w^+d_e\), and \[\sum _e w_eR_{\mathrm {eff}}(e)=n-1.\] The resistance definition agrees with [spielman2009effective, p. 2].

This is the projection-trace sum in [spielman2009effective, Lemma 3(iii), pp. 6-7; proof of Theorem 1, p. 8]. The massive law itself has no limit as a probability law on the full field space: its constant-mode variance diverges. Only the displayed edge observables have been passed to the limit. With \(k\) connected components the same eigenbasis argument replaces \(1\) by \(k\) in the trace limit.