Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 287
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-30662-x

Regular Article

Effect of attachment strategies on bipartite networks

¹ Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, 721302 Kharagpur, India
² University of Southern Denmark, 5230 Odense, Denmark
³ Laboratoire J.A. Dieudonné, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, UMR CNRS 7351, Parc Valrose, 06108 Nice Cedex 02, France

^a e-mail: animeshm@gmail.com

Received: 23 July 2012
Received in final form: 6 April 2013
Published online: 24 June 2013

Abstract

Bipartite systems show remarkable variations in their topological asymptotic properties, e.g., in their degree distribution. Such variations depend on the underlying growth dynamics. A scenario of particular importance is when the two partitions of the bipartite structure do not grow at an equal rate. Here, we focus on the case where one of the partitions can be assumed to be fixed while the other partition grows in time as observed in the codon-gene or alphabet-word network. We show that subtle changes in growth dynamics, particularly in the attachment kernel, can lead to drastic changes of the emergent topological properties. We present a detail analysis of various growth strategies, including sequential and parallel addition of nodes, as well as with and without replacement attachment kernels. Analytical results have been compared with stochastic simulations as well as with real systems showing in all cases an excellent agreement.