Origins of fractality in the growth of complex networks

@misc{citeulike:852668, abstract = {Complex networks from such different fields as biology, technology or sociology share similar organization principles. The possibility of a unique growth mechanism promises to uncover universal origins of collective behaviour. In particular, the emergence of self-similarity in complex networks raises the fundamental question of the growth process according to which these structures evolve. Here we investigate the concept of renormalization as a mechanism for the growth of fractal and non-fractal modular networks. We show that the key principle that gives rise to the fractal architecture of networks is a strong effective 'repulsion' (or, disassortativity) between the most connected nodes (that is, the hubs) on all length scales, rendering them very dispersed. More importantly, we show that a robust network comprising functional modules, such as a cellular network, necessitates a fractal topology, suggestive of an evolutionary drive for their existence.}, author = {Song, Chaoming and Havlin, Shlomo and Makse, Hern\án A. }, citeulike-article-id = {852668}, eprint = {cond-mat/0507216}, keywords = {cellular-network, evolution, fractal, fractal-process, growth, network, process, renormalization, self-similar-process}, month = {Sep}, posted-at = {2006-10-08 16:26:45}, priority = {2}, title = {Origins of fractality in the growth of complex networks}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0507216}, year = {2006} }

TY - ELEC ID - citeulike:852668 L3 - citeulike-article-id:852668 TI - Origins of fractality in the growth of complex networks N2 - Complex networks from such different fields as biology, technology or sociology share similar organization principles. The possibility of a unique growth mechanism promises to uncover universal origins of collective behaviour. In particular, the emergence of self-similarity in complex networks raises the fundamental question of the growth process according to which these structures evolve. Here we investigate the concept of renormalization as a mechanism for the growth of fractal and non-fractal modular networks. We show that the key principle that gives rise to the fractal architecture of networks is a strong effective 'repulsion' (or, disassortativity) between the most connected nodes (that is, the hubs) on all length scales, rendering them very dispersed. More importantly, we show that a robust network comprising functional modules, such as a cellular network, necessitates a fractal topology, suggestive of an evolutionary drive for their existence. KW - cellular-network KW - evolution KW - fractal KW - fractal-process KW - growth KW - network KW - process KW - renormalization KW - self-similar-process AU - Song, Chaoming AU - Havlin, Shlomo AU - Makse, Hernán PY - 2006/Sep/18/ UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0507216 ER -