Eur. Phys. J. B 38, 331-338 (2004)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2004-00125-x

Finding communities in linear time: a physics approach

¹ Applied Physics Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
² HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA

Corresponding author: ^a huberman@hpl.hp.com

Received: 29 October 2003
Published online: 14 May 2004

Abstract

We present a method that allows for the discovery of communities within graphs of arbitrary size in times that scale linearly with their size. This method avoids edge cutting and is based on notions of voltage drops across networks that are both intuitive and easy to solve regardless of the complexity of the graph involved. We additionally show how this algorithm allows for the swift discovery of the community surrounding a given node without having to extract all the communities out of a graph.