The graph cohomology ring of the GKM graph of a flag manifold of type G₂

Suppose a compact torus $T$ acts on a closed smooth manifold $M$. Under certain conditions, Guillemin and Zara associate to $(M, T)$ a labeled graph $\mG_M$ where the labels lie in $H^2(BT)$. They also define the subring $H_T^*(\mG_M)$ of $\bigoplus_{v\in V(\mG_M)}H^*(BT)$, where $V(\mG_M)$ is the set of vertices of $\mG_M$ and we call $H_T^*(\mG_M)$ the "graph cohomology" ring of $\mG_M$. It is known that the equivariant cohomology ring of $M$ can be described by using combinatorial data of the labeled graph. The main result of this paper is to determine the ring structure of equivariant cohomology ring of a flag manifold of type $G_2$ directly, using combinatorial techniques on the graph $\mG_M$. This gives a new computation of the equivariant cohomology ring of a flag manifold of type $G_2$.