Critical phenomena in complex networks

Abstract

The combination of the compactness of networks, featuring small diameters, and their complex architectures results in a variety of critical effects dramatically different from those in cooperative systems on lattices. In the last few years, important steps have been made toward understanding the qualitatively new critical phenomena in complex networks. The results, concepts, and methods of this rapidly developing field are reviewed. Two closely related classes of these critical phenomena are considered, namely, structural phase transitions in the network architectures and transitions in cooperative models on networks as substrates. Systems where a network and interacting agents on it influence each other are also discussed. A wide range of critical phenomena in equilibrium and growing networks including the birth of the giant connected component, percolation, $k$-core percolation, phenomena near epidemic thresholds, condensation transitions, critical phenomena in spin models placed on networks, synchronization, and self-organized criticality effects in interacting systems on networks are mentioned. Strong finite-size effects in these systems and open problems and perspectives are also discussed.