Journal
NATURE PHYSICS
Volume 2, Issue 4, Pages 275-281Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/nphys266
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
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.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available