The emergence of explosive collective phenomena has recently attracted much attention due to the discovery of an explosive percolation transition in complex networks. In this Letter, we demonstrate how an explosive transition shows up in the synchronization of complex heterogeneous networks by incorporating a microscopic correlation between the structural and the dynamical properties of the system. The characteristics of this explosive transition are analytically studied in a star graph reproducing the results obtained in synthetic scale-free networks. Our findings represent the first abrupt synchronization transition in complex networks thus providing a deeper understanding of the microscopic roots of explosive critical phenomena.
Adaptation plays a fundamental role in shaping the structure of a complex network and improving its functional fitting. Even when increasing the level of synchronization in a biological system is considered as the main driving force for adaptation, there is evidence of negative effects induced by excessive synchronization. This indicates that coherence alone can not be enough to explain all the structural features observed in many real-world networks. In this work, we propose an adaptive network model where the dynamical evolution of the node states towards synchronization is coupled with an e…
Networks of Kuramoto oscillators with a positive correlation between the oscillators frequencies and the degree of the their corresponding vertices exhibits the so-called explosive synchronization behavior, which is now under intensive investigation. Here, we study and report explosive synchronization in a situation that has not yet been considered, namely when only a part, typically small, of the vertices is subjected to a degree frequency correlation. Our results show that in order to have explosive synchronization, it suffices to have degree-frequency correlations only for the hubs, the ver…
Explosive synchronization can be observed in scale-free networks when Kuramoto oscillators have natural frequencies equal to their number of connections. In the current work, we took into account mean-field approximations to determine the critical coupling of such explosive synchronization. The obtained equation for the critical coupling has an inverse dependence with the network average degree. This expression differs from that calculated when the frequency distributions are unimodal and even. In this case, the critical coupling depends on the ratio between the first and second statistical mo…
Synchronization is an important collective phenomenon in interacting oscillatory agents. Many functional features of the brain are related to synchronization of neurons. The type of synchronization transition that may occur (explosive vs. continuous) has been the focus of intense attention in recent years, mostly in the context of phase oscillator models for which collective behavior is independent of the mean-value of natural frequency. However, synchronization properties of biologically-motivated neural models depend on the firing frequencies. In this study we report a systematic study of ga…
We study the emergence of synchronization in scale-free networks by considering the Kuramoto model of coupled phase oscillators. The natural frequencies of oscillators are assumed to be correlated with their degrees and a time delay is included in the system. This assumption allows enhancing the explosive transition to reach the synchronous state. We provide an analytical treatment developed in a star graph which reproduces results obtained in scale-free networks. Our findings have important implications in understanding the synchronization of complex networks, since the time delay is present …
Critical phenomena in complex networks, and the emergence of dynamical abrupt transitions in the macroscopic state of the system are currently a subject of the outmost interest. We report evidence of an explosive phase synchronization in networks of chaotic units. Namely, by means of both extensive simulations of networks made up of chaotic units, and validation with an experiment of electronic circuits in a star configuration, we demonstrate the existence of a first order transition towards synchronization of the phases of the networked units. Our findings constitute the first prove of this k…
The higher-order interactions of complex systems, such as the brain are captured by their simplicial complex structure and have a significant effect on dynamics. However, the existing dynamical models defined on simplicial complexes make the strong assumption that the dynamics resides exclusively on the nodes. Here we formulate the higher-order Kuramoto model which describes the interactions between oscillators placed not only on nodes but also on links, triangles, and so on. We show that higher-order Kuramoto dynamics can lead to an explosive synchronization transition by using an adaptive co…
Critical transitions are observed in many complex systems. This includes the onset of synchronization in a network of coupled oscillators or the emergence an epidemic state within a population. "Explosive" first-order transitions have caught particular attention in a variety of systems when classical models are generalized by incorporating additional effects. Here we give a mathematical argument that the emergence of such first-order transitions is not surprising but rather a universally expected effect: Varying a classical model along a generic two-parameter family must lead to a change of th…
We study scale-free networks constructed via a cooperative Achlioptas growth process. Links between nodes are introduced in the network in order to produce a scale-free graph with given exponent lambda for the degree distribution, but the choice of each new link depends on the mass of the clusters that this link will merge. Networks constructed via this biased procedure show a percolation transition which strongly differs from the one observed in standard percolation, where links are introduced just randomly. The different growth process leads to a phase transition with a non-vanishing percola…
Despite the great attention devoted to the study of phase oscillators on complex networks in the last two decades, it remains unclear whether scale-free networks exhibit a nonzero critical coupling strength for the onset of synchronization in the thermodynamic limit. Here, we systematically compare predictions from the heterogeneous degree mean-field (HMF) and the quenched mean-field (QMF) approaches to extensive numerical simulations on large networks. We provide compelling evidence that the critical coupling vanishes as the number of oscillators increases for scale-free networks characterize…
Percolation is one of the most studied processes in statistical physics. A recent paper by Achlioptas et al. [Science 323, 1453 (2009)] has shown that the percolation transition, which is usually continuous, becomes discontinuous ("explosive") if links are added to the system according to special cooperative rules (Achlioptas processes). In this paper we present a detailed numerical analysis of Achlioptas processes with product rule on various systems, including lattices, random networks a' la Erdoes-Renyi and scale-free networks. In all cases we recover the explosive transition by Achlioptas …
Recently it has been aroused a great interest about explosive (i.e., discontinuous) transitions. They manifest in distinct systems, such as synchronization in coupled oscillators, percolation regime, absorbing phase transitions and more recently, in the majority-vote (MV) model with inertia. In the latter, the model rules are slightly modified by the inclusion of a term depending on the local spin (an inertial term). In such case, Chen et al. (Phys Rev. E {5}, 042304 (2017)) have found that relevant inertia changes the nature of the phase transition in complex networks, from continuous to disc…
In this work, we study the synchronization of coupled phase oscillators on the underlying topology of scale-free networks. In particular, we assume that each network's component is an oscillator and that each interacts with the others following the Kuramoto model. We then study the onset of global phase synchronization and fully characterize the system's dynamics. We also found that the resynchronization time of a perturbed node decays as a power law of its connectivity, providing a simple analytical explanation to this interesting behavior.
In this article, we investigate explosive bond percolation (EBP) with product rule, formally known as Achlioptas process, on a scale-free multifractal weighted planar stochastic lattice (WPSL). One of the key features of the EBP transition is the delay, compared to corresponding random bond percolation (RBP), in the onset of spanning cluster. However, when it happens, it happens so dramatically that initially it was believed, albeit ultimately proved wrong, that explosive percolation (EP) exhibits first order transition. In the case of EP, much efforts were devoted to resolving the issue of it…
Percolation is perhaps the simplest example of a process exhibiting a phase transition and one of the most studied phenomena in statistical physics. The percolation transition is continuous if sites/bonds are occupied independently with the same probability. However, alternative rules for the occupation of sites/bonds might affect the order of the transition. A recent set of rules proposed by Achlioptas et al. [Science 323, 1453 (2009)], characterized by competitive link addition, was claimed to lead to a discontinuous connectedness transition, named "explosive percolation". In this work we su…
In this Letter, we show that the explosive percolation is a novel continuous phase transition. The order-parameter-distribution histogram at the percolation threshold is studied in Erdős-Rényi networks, scale-free networks, and square lattice. In finite system, two well-defined Gaussian-like peaks coexist, and the valley between the two peaks is suppressed with the system size increasing. This finite-size effect always appears in typical first-order phase transition. However, both of the two peaks shift to zero point in a power law manner, which indicates the explosive percolation is continuou…
We study the synchronization of R{ö}ssler oscillators as prototype of chaotic systems, when they are coupled on scale-free complex networks. We find that the underlying topology crucially affects the global synchronization properties. Especially, we show that the existence of loops facilitates the synchronizability of the system, whereas Rössler oscillators do not synchronize on tree-like topologies beyond a certain size. By considering Cayley trees, modified by various shortcuts, we find that also the distribution of shortest path lengths between two oscillators plays an important role for th…
We study the synchronization transition in scale-free networks that display power-law asymptotic behaviors in their degree distributions. The critical coupling strength and the order-parameter critical exponent derived by the mean field approach depend on the degree exponent $λ$, which implies a close connection between structural organization and the emergence of dynamical order in complex systems. We also derive the finite-size scaling behavior of the order parameter finding that the giant cluster of synchronized nodes is formed in different ways between scale-free networks with $2<λ<3$ and …
In this paper we study a model of synchronization process on scale free networks with degree-degree correlations. This model was already studied on this kind of networks without correlations by Pastore y Piontti {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 76}, 046117 (2007). Here, we study the effects of the degree-degree correlation on the behavior of the load fluctuations $W_s$ in the steady state. We found that for assortative networks there exist a specific correlation where the system is optimal synchronized. In addition, we found that close to this optimally value the fluctuations does not depend on…
We investigate the synchronization transition of the modified Kuramoto model where the oscillators form a scale-free network with degree exponent $λ$. An oscillator of degree $k_i$ is coupled to its neighboring oscillators with asymmetric and degree-dependent coupling in the form of $\couplingcoeff k_i^{η-1}$. By invoking the mean-field approach, we determine the synchronization transition point $J_c$, which is zero (finite) when $η> λ-2$ ($η< λ-2$). We find eight different synchronization transition behaviors depending on the values of $η$ and $λ$, and derive the critical exponents associated…
In this work we investigate the stability of synchronized states for the Kuramoto model on scale-free and random networks in the presence of white noise forcing. We show that for a fixed coupling constant, the robustness of the globally synchronized state against the noise is dependent on the noise intensity on both kinds of networks. At low noise intensities the random networks are more robust against losing the coherency but upon increasing the noise, at a specific noise strength the synchronization among the population vanishes suddenly. In contrast, on scale-free networks the global synchr…
We consider the discrete surface growth process with relaxation to the minimum [F. Family, J. Phys. A {\bf 19} L441, (1986).] as a possible synchronization mechanism on scale-free networks, characterized by a degree distribution $P(k) \sim k^{-λ}$, where $k$ is the degree of a node and $λ$ his broadness, and compare it with the usually applied Edward-Wilkinson process [S. F. Edwards and D. R. Wilkinson, Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. A {\bf 381},17 (1982) ]. In spite of both processes belong to the same universality class for Euclidean lattices, in this work we demonstrate that for scale-free netwo…
The human cortex is never at rest but in a state of sparse and noisy neural activity that can be detected at broadly diverse resolution scales. It has been conjectured that such a state is best described as a critical dynamical process -- whose nature is still not fully understood -- where scale-free avalanches of activity emerge at the edge of a phase transition. In particular, some works suggest that this is most likely a synchronization transition, separating synchronous from asynchronous phases. Here, by investigating a simplified model of coupled excitable oscillators describing the corte…
Understanding the origin, nature, and functional significance of complex patterns of neural activity, as recorded by diverse electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques, is a central challenge in neuroscience. Such patterns include collective oscillations emerging out of neural synchronization as well as highly heterogeneous outbursts of activity interspersed by periods of quiescence, called "neuronal avalanches." Much debate has been generated about the possible scale invariance or criticality of such avalanches and its relevance for brain function. Aimed at shedding light onto this, her…
By employing a recently introduced optimization algorithm we explicitely design optimally synchronizable (unweighted) networks for any given scale-free degree distribution. We explore how the optimization process affects degree-degree correlations and observe a generic tendency towards disassortativity. Still, we show that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between synchronizability and disassortativity. On the other hand, we study the nature of optimally un-synchronizable networks, that is, networks whose topology minimizes the range of stability of the synchronous state. The resulting …
