Eur. Phys. J. B 65, 591-594 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00370-y

Epidemic threshold and phase transition in scale-free networks with asymmetric infection

¹ Department of Electronic Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China
² Centre for Chaos and Complex Networks and Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, P.R. China

Corresponding authors: ^a platoy@mail.ustc.edu.cn - ^b zqfu@ustc.edu.cn - ^c eegchen@cityu.edu.hk

Received: 24 July 2007
Revised: 9 June 2008
Published online: 27 September 2008

Abstract

We study the SIS epidemic dynamics on scale-free weighted networks with asymmetric infection, by both analysis and numerical simulations, with focus on the epidemic threshold as well as critical behaviors. It is demonstrated that the asymmetry of infection plays an important role: we could redistribute the asymmetry to balance the degree heterogeneity of the network and then to restore the epidemic threshold to a fnite value. On the other hand, we show that the absence of the epidemic threshold is not so bad as commented previously since the prevalence grows very slowly in this case and one could only protect a few vertices to prevent the diseases propagation.