February 14, 2023
Complex networks can model a range of different systems, from the human brain to social connections. Some of those networks have a large number of nodes and links, making it impractical to analyze them directly. One strategy to simplify these systems is by creating miniaturized versions of the networks that keep their main properties. A convenient tool that applies that strategy is the renormalization group (RG), a methodology used in statistical physics to change the scales of physical systems. This method consists of two steps: a coarse grain, where one reduces the size of the system, and a rescaling of the interactions to compensate for the information loss. This work applies RG to complex networks by introducing a coarse-graining method based on the Laplacian matrix. We use a field-theoretical approach to calculate the correlation function and coarse-grain the most correlated nodes into super-nodes, applying our method to several artificial and real-world networks. The results are promising, with most of the networks under analysis showing self-similar properties across different scales.
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June 4, 2024
The renormalization group (RG) constitutes a fundamental framework in modern theoretical physics. It allows the study of many systems showing states with large-scale correlations and their classification in a relatively small set of universality classes. RG is the most powerful tool for investigating organizational scales within dynamic systems. However, the application of RG techniques to complex networks has presented significant challenges, primarily due to the intricate i...
The renormalization group is the cornerstone of the modern theory of universality and phase transitions, a powerful tool to scrutinize symmetries and organizational scales in dynamical systems. However, its network counterpart is particularly challenging due to correlations between intertwined scales. To date, the explorations are based on hidden geometries hypotheses. Here, we propose a Laplacian RG diffusion-based picture in complex networks, defining both the Kadanoff supe...
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Complex networks have acquired a great popularity in recent years, since the graph representation of many natural, social and technological systems is often very helpful to characterize and model their phenomenology. Additionally, the mathematical tools of statistical physics have proven to be particularly suitable for studying and understanding complex networks. Nevertheless, an important obstacle to this theoretical approach is still represented by the difficulties to draw ...
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We propose a cross-order Laplacian renormalization group (X-LRG) scheme for arbitrary higher-order networks. The renormalization group is a pillar of the theory of scaling, scale-invariance, and universality in physics. An RG scheme based on diffusion dynamics was recently introduced for complex networks with dyadic interactions. Despite mounting evidence of the importance of polyadic interactions, we still lack a general RG scheme for higher-order networks. Our approach uses...
June 27, 2024
Scale invariance profoundly influences the dynamics and structure of complex systems, spanning from critical phenomena to network architecture. Here, we propose a precise definition of scale-invariant networks by leveraging the concept of a constant entropy loss rate across scales in a renormalization-group coarse-graining setting. This framework enables us to differentiate between scale-free and scale-invariant networks, revealing distinct characteristics within each class. ...
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While renormalization groups are fundamental in physics, renormalization of complex networks remains vague in its conceptual definition and methodology. Here, we propose a novel strategy to renormalize complex networks. Rather than resorting to handling the bare structure of a network, we overlay it with a readily renormalizable physical model, which reflects real-world scenarios with a broad generality. From the renormalization of the overlying system, we extract a rigorous ...
September 4, 2004
We perform the renormalization-group-like numerical analysis of geographically embedded complex networks on the two-dimensional square lattice. At each step of coarsegraining procedure, the four vertices on each $2 \times 2$ square box are merged to a single vertex, resulting in the coarsegrained system of the smaller sizes. Repetition of the process leads to the observation that the coarsegraining procedure does not alter the qualitative characteristics of the original scale...
March 3, 2005
Complex networks have been studied extensively due to their relevance to many real systems as diverse as the World-Wide-Web (WWW), the Internet, energy landscapes, biological and social networks \cite{ab-review,mendes,vespignani,newman,amaral}. A large number of real networks are called ``scale-free'' because they show a power-law distribution of the number of links per node \cite{ab-review,barabasi1999,faloutsos}. However, it is widely believed that complex networks are not ...
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Multiple scales coexist in complex networks. However, the small world property makes them strongly entangled. This turns the elucidation of length scales and symmetries a defiant challenge. Here, we define a geometric renormalization group for complex networks and use the technique to investigate networks as viewed at different scales. We find that real networks embedded in a hidden metric space show geometric scaling, in agreement with the renormalizability of the underlying...
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Recently, it has been claimed that some complex networks are self-similar under a convenient renormalization procedure. We present a general method to study renormalization flows in graphs. We find that the behavior of some variables under renormalization, such as the maximum number of connections of a node, obeys simple scaling laws, characterized by critical exponents. This is true for any class of graphs, from random to scale-free networks, from lattices to hierarchical gr...