Rethinking Graph Contrastive Learning for Heterophilic Graphs: An Effective Method for Heterophilic GCL Methods With Regularization and Stabilization Techniques Enhanced High-Pass Filter

Graph contrastive learning (GCL) is a powerful self-supervised learning approach. However, existing GCL methods are designed for homophilic graphs, using low-pass filters that struggle to capture high-frequency components in heterophilic graphs. We proposeGraphContrastiveLearning withRegularization and stabilization techniques enhanced high-passFilter (GCLRF).REgularization andStabilization techniques enhancedHigh-pass filter (RESH) can serve as a mutually promoting plug-in, significantly improving the performance of various homophilic GCL training strategies on heterophilic graphs. We also investigate four component orderings in RESH and identify the optimal fusion mechanism, demonstrating its critical impact on performance. Experiments show GCLRF achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance across six benchmark datasets in node classification and clustering. Notably, on the Cornell dataset, GCLRF outperformers classification accuracy by 6.76% and achieves a 23.64%relative improvement in clustering normalized mutual information (NMI).