Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 320
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-40456-9

Regular Article

Burstiness and spreading on temporal networks

¹ naXys, University of Namur, Rempart de la Vierge 8, 5000 Namur, Belgium
² ICTEAM and CORE, Université catholique de Louvain, 4 Avenue Lemaître, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

^a e-mail: renaud.lambiotte@unamur.be

Received: 3 May 2013
Received in final form: 29 May 2013
Published online: 15 July 2013

Abstract

We discuss how spreading processes on temporal networks are impacted by the shape of their inter-event time distributions. Through simple mathematical arguments and toy examples, we find that the key factor is the ordering in which events take place, a property that tends to be affected by the bulk of the distributions and not only by their tail, as usually considered in the literature. We show that a detailed modeling of the temporal patterns observed in complex networks can change dramatically the properties of a spreading process, such as the ergodicity of a random walk process or the persistence of an epidemic.