Eur. Phys. J. B 76, 179-183 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2010-00208-1

Information explosion on complex networks and control

¹ School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85287, USA
² Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, P.R. China
³ Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85287, USA

Corresponding author: ^a wenxuw@gmail.com

Received: 28 October 2009
Revised: 11 May 2010
Published online: 2 July 2010

Abstract

When a piece of information spreads on a complex network, error or distortion can occur. For a high error probability, the phenomenon of information explosion can occur where the number of distinct pieces of information on the network increases continuously with time. We construct a physical model to address this phenomenon. The transition to information explosion as the error probability increases through a critical value is uncovered and elucidated, and a control strategy is articulated to maximize the robustness of the network against information explosion, which is validated by both numerical computations and a mean-field based analysis.