Phase transition in a network model of social balance with Glauber dynamics

Abstract

We study the evolution of a social network with friendly or enmity connections into a balanced state by introducing a dynamical model with an intrinsic randomness, similar to Glauber dynamics in statistical mechanics. We include the possibility of the tension promotion as well as the tension reduction in our model. Such a more realistic situation enables the system to escape from local minima in its energy landscape and thus to exit out of frozen imbalanced states, which are unwanted outcomes observed in previous models. On the other hand, in finite networks the dynamics takes the system into a balanced phase, if the randomness is lower than a critical value. For large networks, we also find a sharp phase transition at the initial positive link density of ρ_{0}^{*}=1/2, where the system transitions from a bipolar state into a paradise. This modifies the gradual phase transition at a nontrivial value of ρ_{0}^{*}≃0.65, observed in recent studies.