Deterministic scale-free networks

Scale-free networks are abundant in nature and society, describing such diverse systems as the world wide web, the web of human sexual contacts, or the chemical network of a cell. All models used to generate a scale-free topology are stochastic, that is they create networks in which the nodes appear to be randomly connected to each other. Here we propose a simple model that generates scale-free networks in a deterministic fashion. We solve exactly the model, showing that the tail of the degree distribution follows a power law. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.