Time-scale competition leading to fragmentation and recombination transitions in the coevolution of network and states

FEDERICO VAZQUEZ; JUAN C. GONZALEZ-AVELLA; VICTOR M. EGUILUZ; MAXI SAN MIGUEL

PHYSICAL REVIEW E - STATISTICAL PHYSICS, PLASMAS, FLUIDS AND RELATED INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS

The American Physical Society

Año: 2007 vol. 76 p. 46120 - 46120

1063-651X

We study the coevolution of network structure and node states in a model of multiple state interacting agents. The system displays two transitions, network recombination and fragmentation, governed by time scales that emerge from the dynamics. The recombination transition separates a frozen configuration, composed by disconnected network components whose agents share the same state, from an active configuration, with a fraction of links that are continuously being rewired. The nature of this transition is explained analytically as the maximum of a characteristic time. The fragmentation transition, that appears between two absorbing frozen phases, is an anomalous order-disorder transition, governed by a crossover between the time scales that control the structure and state dynamics.