Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: Critical states are sometimes identified experimentally through power-law statistics or universal scaling functions. We show here that such features naturally emerge from networks in self-sustained irregular regimes away from criticality. In these regimes, statistical physics theory of large interacting systems predict a regime where the nodes have independent and identically distributed dynamics. We thus investigated the statistics of a system in which units are replaced by independent stochastic surrogates and found the same power-law statistics, indicating that these are not sufficient to establish criticality. We rather suggest that these are universal features of large-scale networks when considered macroscopically. These results put caution on the interpretation of scaling laws found in nature.
Source: Physical review. E
Authors: Jonathan Touboul, Alain Destexhe
Language: English
Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1586234143