Threshold Model for Triggered Avalanches on Networks

Abstract

Based on a theoretical model for opinion spreading on a network, through avalanches, the effect of external field is now considered, by using methods from non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. The original part contains the implementation that the avalanche is only triggered when a local variable (a so called awareness) reaches and goes above a threshold. The dynamical rules are constrained to be as simple as possible, in order to sort out the basic features, though more elaborated variants are proposed. Several results are obtained for a Erd\"os-R\'enyi network and interpreted through simple analytical laws, scale free or logistic map-like, i.e., (i) the sizes, durations, and number of avalanches, including the respective distributions, (ii) the number of times the external field is applied to one possible node before all nodes are found to be above the threshold, (iii) the number of nodes still below the threshold and the number of hot nodes (close to threshold) at each time step.