Minimum spanning trees on weighted scale-free networks

A complete understanding of real networks requires us to understand the consequences of the uneven interaction strengths between a systems components. Here we use the minimum spanning tree (MST) to explore the effect of weight assignment and network topology on the organization of complex networks. We find that if the weight distribution is correlated with the network topology, the MSTs are either scale-free or exponential. In contrast, when the correlations between weights and topology are absent, the MST degree distribution is a power-law and independent of the weight distribution. These results offer a systematic way to explore the impact of weak links on the structure and integrity of complex networks.