Rewiring hierarchical scale-free networks: Influence on synchronizability and topology

TL;DR

This paper studies how randomly rewiring edges in hierarchical scale-free networks affects their synchronizability, revealing that rewiring can both improve and worsen synchronization, and compares different network models.

Contribution

It introduces a method to rewire hierarchical scale-free networks, analyzing the impact on synchronizability and topological properties, bridging deterministic and random network models.

Findings

Rewiring can significantly enhance or deteriorate network synchronizability.

Random scale-free networks promote better synchronizability than deterministic ones.

Rewiring alters topological features influencing synchronization performance.

Abstract

Many real-world complex networks simultaneously exhibit topological features of scale-free behaviour and hierarchical organization. In this regard, deterministic scale-free [A.-L. Barab\'asi \etal, Physica A, 299, 3 (2001)] and pseudofractal scale-free [S. N. Dorogovtsev \etal, Phy. Rev. E, 65, 6 (2002)] networks constitute notable models which simultaneously incorporate the aforementioned properties. The rules governing the formation of such networks are completely deterministic. However, real-world networks are presumably neither completely deterministic, nor perfectly hierarchical. Therefore, we suggest here perfectly hierarchical scale-free networks with randomly rewired edges as better representatives of practical networked systems. In particular, we preserve the scale-free degree distribution of the various deterministic networks but successively relax the hierarchical structure while rewiring them. We utilize the framework of master stability function in investigating the synchronizability of dynamical systems coupled on such rewired networks. Interestingly, this reveals that the process of rewiring is capable of significantly enhancing, as well as, deteriorating the synchronizability of the resulting networks. We investigate the influence of rewiring edges on the topological properties of the rewired networks and, in turn, their relation to the synchronizability of the respective topologies. Finally, we compare the synchronizability of deterministic scale-free and pseudofractcal scale-free networks with that of random scale-free networks (generated using the classical Barab\'asi-Albert model of growth and preferential attachment) and find that the latter ones promote synchronizability better than their deterministic counterparts.