Explosive Synchronization Transitions in Scale-free Networks

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how explosive synchronization transitions occur in scale-free networks by linking structural and dynamical properties, providing analytical insights and revealing the first abrupt transition in such systems.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopic correlation mechanism causing explosive synchronization and analytically studies this phenomenon in star graphs representing scale-free networks.

Findings

Explosive synchronization occurs in heterogeneous networks.

Analytical results match synthetic scale-free network simulations.

First demonstration of abrupt synchronization transition in complex networks.

Abstract

The emergence of explosive collective phenomena has recently attracted much attention due to the discovery of an explosive percolation transition in complex networks. In this Letter, we demonstrate how an explosive transition shows up in the synchronization of complex heterogeneous networks by incorporating a microscopic correlation between the structural and the dynamical properties of the system. The characteristics of this explosive transition are analytically studied in a star graph reproducing the results obtained in synthetic scale-free networks. Our findings represent the first abrupt synchronization transition in complex networks thus providing a deeper understanding of the microscopic roots of explosive critical phenomena.