Graph concatenations to derive weighted fractal networks (Q2205279)

Summary: Given an initial weighted graph \(G_0\), an integer \(m>1\), and \(m\) scaling factors \(f_1,\ldots, f_m\in( 0,1)\), we define a sequence of weighted graphs \(\{ G_k\}_{k = 0}^\infty\) iteratively. Provided that \(G_{k - 1}\) is given for \(k\geq1\), we let \(G_{k - 1}^{( 1)},\dots,G_{k - 1}^{( m)}\) be \(m\) copies of \(G_{k - 1}\), whose weighted edges have been scaled by \(f_1,\dots, f_m\), respectively. Then, \( G_k\) is constructed by concatenating \(G_0\) with all the \(m\) copies. The proposed framework shares several properties with fractal sets, and the similarity dimension \(d_{\mathrm{fract}}\) has a great impact on the topology of the graphs \(G_k\) (e.g., node strength distribution). Moreover, the average geodesic distance of \(G_k\) increases logarithmically with the system size; thus, this framework also generates the small-world property.