Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma in Random Graphs

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the structure of random graphs influences the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game, revealing phase transitions and the impact of connectivity on cooperative behavior.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive phase diagram of the evolutionary prisoner's dilemma on random graphs, combining numerical and analytical methods, and explores effects of fluctuating connectivities.

Findings

Low connectivity leads to initial-condition-dependent cooperation levels.

High connectivity results in fixed cooperation density independent of initial conditions.

Multiple phase transitions occur in lattices with fluctuating connectivities.

Abstract

We study an evolutionary version of the spatial prisoner's dilemma game, where the agents are placed in a random graph. For lattices with fixed connectivity, $\alpha$, we show that for low values of $\alpha$ the final density of cooperating agents depends on the initial conditions, while it does not depend for high connectivity lattices. We fully characterized the phase diagram of the system, using both, extensive numerical simulations and analytical computations. It is shown that two different behaviors are well defined: a Nash equilibrium one, where the density of cooperating agents $\rho_c$ is fixed, and a non-stationary one, where $\rho_c$ fluctuates in time. Moreover we study lattices with fluctuating connectivities and find that the phase diagram previously developed looses its meaning. In fact, multiple transitions appear and only one regime may be defined. This regime is completely characterized by a non stationary state where the density of cooperating agents varies in time.