Self-organized critical network dynamics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple model of network dynamics that self-organizes into critical states, reproducing features like scale-free structures and sudden collapses, to better understand propagation of failures in real networks.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel model demonstrating how local rewiring leads to self-organized criticality and diverse network topologies, including scale-free and complete networks.

Findings

The model reaches a critical stationary state with avalanche-like rewiring.

Networks can be either single scale or scale-free depending on parameters.

The model exhibits a sudden collapse to a complete network.

Abstract

We propose a simple model that aims at describing, in a stylized manner, how local breakdowns due unbalances or congestion propagate in real dynamical networks. The model converges to a self-organized critical stationary state in which the network shapes itself as a consequence of avalanches of rewiring processes. Depending on the model's specification, we obtain either single scale or scale-free networks. We characterize in detail the relation between the statistical properties of the network and the nature of the critical state, by computing the critical exponents. The model also displays a non-trivial, sudden, collapse to a complete network.