No Arabic abstract
Brute-force simulations for dynamics on very large networks are quite expensive. While phenomenological treatments may capture some macroscopic properties, they often ignore important microscopic details. Fortunately, one may be only interested in the property of local part and not in the whole network. Here, we propose a hybrid multiscale coarse-grained(HMCG) method which combines a fine Monte Carlo(MC) simulation on the part of nodes of interest with a more coarse Langevin dynamics on the rest part. We demonstrate the validity of our method by analyzing the equilibrium Ising model and the nonequilibrium susceptible-infected-susceptible model. It is found that HMCG not only works very well in reproducing the phase transitions and critical phenomena of the microscopic models, but also accelerates the evaluation of dynamics with significant computational savings compared to microscopic MC simulations directly for the whole networks. The proposed method is general and can be applied to a wide variety of networked systems just adopting appropriate microscopic simulation methods and coarse graining approaches.
Using an information theoretic point of view, we investigate how a dynamics acting on a network can be coarse grained through the use of graph partitions. Specifically, we are interested in how aggregating the state space of a Markov process according to a partition impacts on the thus obtained lower-dimensional dynamics. We highlight that for a dynamics on a particular graph there may be multiple coarse grained descriptions that capture different, incomparable features of the original process. For instance, a coarse graining induced by one partition may be commensurate with a time-scale separation in the dynamics, while another coarse graining may correspond to a different lower-dimensional dynamics that preserves the Markov property of the original process. Taking inspiration from the literature of Computational Mechanics, we find that a convenient tool to summarise and visualise such dynamical properties of a coarse grained model (partition) is the entrogram. The entrogram gathers certain information-theoretic measures, which quantify how information flows across time steps. These information theoretic quantities include the entropy rate, as well as a measure for the memory contained in the process, i.e., how well the dynamics can be approximated by a first order Markov process. We use the entrogram to investigate how specific macro-scale connection patterns in the state-space transition graph of the original dynamics result in desirable properties of coarse grained descriptions. We thereby provide a fresh perspective on the interplay between structure and dynamics in networks, and the process of partitioning from an information theoretic perspective. We focus on networks that may be approximated by both a core-periphery or a clustered organization, and highlight that each of these coarse grained descriptions can capture different aspects of a Markov process acting on the network.
We consider a dynamical network model in which two competitors have fixed and different states, and each normal agent adjusts its state according to a distributed consensus protocol. The state of each normal agent converges to a steady value which is a convex combination of the competitors states, and is independent of the initial states of agents. This implies that the competition result is fully determined by the network structure and positions of competitors in the network. We compute an Influence Matrix (IM) in which each element characterizing the influence of an agent on another agent in the network. We use the IM to predict the bias of each normal agent and thus predict which competitor will win. Furthermore, we compare the IM criterion with seven node centrality measures to predict the winner. We find that the competitor with higher Katz Centrality in an undirected network or higher PageRank in a directed network is much more likely to be the winner. These findings may shed new light on the role of network structure in competition and to what extent could competitors adjust network structure so as to win the competition.
To understand, predict, and control complex networked systems, a prerequisite is to reconstruct the network structure from observable data. Despite recent progress in network reconstruction, binary-state dynamics that are ubiquitous in nature, technology and society still present an outstanding challenge in this field. Here we offer a framework for reconstructing complex networks with binary-state dynamics by developing a universal data-based linearization approach that is applicable to systems with linear, nonlinear, discontinuous, or stochastic dynamics governed by monotonous functions. The linearization procedure enables us to convert the network reconstruction into a sparse signal reconstruction problem that can be resolved through convex optimization. We demonstrate generally high reconstruction accuracy for a number of complex networks associated with distinct binary-state dynamics from using binary data contaminated by noise and missing data. Our framework is completely data driven, efficient and robust, and does not require any a priori knowledge about the detailed dynamical process on the network. The framework represents a general paradigm for reconstructing, understanding, and exploiting complex networked systems with binary-state dynamics.
Various coarse-grained models have been proposed to study the spreading dynamics in the network. A microscopic theory is needed to connect the spreading dynamics with the individual behaviors. In this letter, we unify the description of different spreading dynamics on complex networks by decomposing the microscopic dynamics into two basic processes, the aging process and the contact process. A microscopic dynamical equation is derived to describe the dynamics of individual nodes on the network. The hierarchy of a duration coarse-grained (DCG) approach is obtained to study duration-dependent processes, where the transition rates depend on the duration of an individual node on a state. Applied to the epidemic spreading, such formalism is feasible to reproduce different epidemic models, e.g., the susceptible-infected-recovered and the susceptible-infected-susceptible models, and to associate with the corresponding macroscopic spreading parameters with the microscopic transition rate. The DCG approach enables us to obtain the steady state of the general SIS model with arbitrary duration-dependent recovery and infection rates. The current hierarchical formalism can also be used to describe the spreading of information and public opinions, or to model a reliability theory in networks.
A first-principle multiscale modeling approach is presented, which is derived from the solution of the Ornstein-Zernike equation for the coarse-grained representation of polymer liquids. The approach is analytical, and for this reason is transferable. It is here applied to determine the structure of several polymeric systems, which have different parameter values, such as molecular length, monomeric structure, local flexibility, and thermodynamic conditions. When the pair distribution function obtained from this procedure is compared with the results from a full atomistic simulation, it shows quantitative agreement. Moreover, the multiscale procedure accurately captures both large and local scale properties while remaining computationally advantageous.