Weak percolation on multiplex networks with overlapping edges

TL;DR

This paper analyzes weak percolation in multiplex networks with overlapping edges, revealing how overlaps influence phase transitions and universality classes, with detailed phase diagrams for two and three-layer systems.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework for weak percolation on multiplex networks with overlaps, highlighting the contrasting effects on critical phenomena compared to mutually connected components.

Findings

Overlaps do not affect giant mutually connected component criticality.

In two layers, any overlap induces a transition to ordinary percolation.

Three-layer systems exhibit both continuous and discontinuous phase transitions, with a tricritical point.

Abstract

We solve the weak percolation problem for multiplex networks with overlapping edges. In weak percolation, a vertex belongs to a connected component if at least one of its neighbors in each of the layers is in this component. This is a weaker condition than for a mutually connected component in interdependent networks, in which any two vertices must be connected by a path within each of the layers. The effect of the overlaps on weak percolation turns out to be opposite to that on the giant mutually connected component. While for the giant mutually connected component, overlaps do not change the critical phenomena, our theory shows that in two layers any (nonzero) concentration of overlaps drives the weak percolation transition to the ordinary percolation universality class. In three layers, the phase diagram of the problem contains two lines -- of a continuous phase transition and of a discontinuous one -- connected in various ways depending on how the layers overlap. In the case of only doubled overlapped edges, two of the end points of these lines coincide, resulting in a tricritical point like that seen in heterogeneous $k$-core percolation.