Perturbation Spreading in Complex Networks

Cast a pebble into a calm pond, and you will probably see radiating ripples in the form of concentric circles. Take a second and imagine, what will you see if you kick a node of a complex network at rest? How long would it take for a node on the other side of the network to “feel” the impact?

We revealed topology-independent master curves of perturbation spreading in complex networks, by combining an analysis of the transient linearized response of diffusively-coupled networks and numerical simulations of the actual nonlinear network responses. Thereby accuate predictions for perturbation arrival times in target networks with arbitrary topologies can be obtained (Zhang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 2020).