Synchronization in complex networks

TL;DR

This review discusses recent advances in understanding synchronization phenomena in complex networks, highlighting how network topology influences dynamics across various disciplines through numerical and analytical methods.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of synchronization in complex networks, integrating recent theoretical developments, numerical results, and multidisciplinary applications.

Findings

Network topology critically affects synchronization patterns.

Interplay between structure and function leads to emergent phenomena.

Synchronization applications span biology, engineering, and social sciences.

Abstract

Synchronization processes in populations of locally interacting elements are in the focus of intense research in physical, biological, chemical, technological and social systems. The many efforts devoted to understand synchronization phenomena in natural systems take now advantage of the recent theory of complex networks. In this review, we report the advances in the comprehension of synchronization phenomena when oscillating elements are constrained to interact in a complex network topology. We also overview the new emergent features coming out from the interplay between the structure and the function of the underlying pattern of connections. Extensive numerical work as well as analytical approaches to the problem are presented. Finally, we review several applications of synchronization in complex networks to different disciplines: biological systems and neuroscience, engineering and computer science, and economy and social sciences.