Fractal and Small-World Networks Formed by Self-Organized Critical Dynamics

Abstract: We propose a dynamical model in which a network structure evolves in a self-organized critical (SOC) manner and explain a possible origin of the emergence of fractal and small-world networks. Our model combines a network growth and its decay by failures of nodes. The decay mechanism reflects the instability of large functional networks against cascading overload failures. It is demonstrated that the dynamical system surely exhibits SOC characteristics, such as power-law forms of the avalanche size distribution, the cluster size distribution, and the distribution of the time interval between intermittent avalanches. During the network evolution, fractal networks are spontaneously generated when networks experience critical cascades of failures that lead to a percolation transition. In contrast, networks far from criticality have small-world structures. We also observe the crossover behavior from fractal to small-world structure in the network evolution.