State Concentration Exponent as a Measure of Quickness in Kauffman-type Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces the state concentration exponent as a new measure to analyze the quickness of dynamics in Kauffman-type networks, revealing how network density and type influence transient path length and robustness.

Contribution

It proposes a unified framework using state concentration exponent to quantify network quickness, providing insights into the effects of network density and element type on dynamics.

Findings

Sparse Boolean and majority vote networks achieve quickness due to long-tailed in-degree distributions.

Dense majority vote networks can achieve both quickness and robustness.

State concentration exponent effectively characterizes transient dynamics in complex networks.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of randomly connected networks composed of binary Boolean elements and those composed of binary majority vote elements. We elucidate their differences in both sparsely and densely connected cases. The quickness of large network dynamics is usually quantified by the length of transient paths, an analytically intractable measure. For discrete-time dynamics of networks of binary elements, we address this dilemma with an alternative unified framework by using a concept termed state concentration, defined as the exponent of the average number of t-step ancestors in state transition graphs. The state transition graph is defined by nodes corresponding to network states and directed links corresponding to transitions. Using this exponent, we interrogate the dynamics of random Boolean and majority vote networks. We find that extremely sparse Boolean networks and majority vote networks with arbitrary density achieve quickness, owing in part to long-tailed in-degree distributions. As a corollary, only relatively dense majority vote networks can achieve both quickness and robustness.