Epidemics and chaotic synchronization in recombining monogamous populations (Q602706)

This paper deals with an interaction network associated with an epidemiological model of a sexually transmitted infection in a monogamous population where at any time each individual has just one partner, but partners can change. Two critical phenomena in the collective behavior of large ensembles of interacting dynamical elements are studied, both analytically and numerically: the appearance of endemic states in a SIS epidemiological model and the stabilization of identical chaotic maps. Although corresponding interaction patterns are highly disconnected and change in time, the lack of connectivity in the instantaneous interaction patterns is compensated by occasional random reconnections which recombine interacting couples by exchanging their partners. Recombination of interacting couples introduces a new parameter, the recombination rate. If this parameter is varied, endemic states and full synchronization occur above a certain critical value of the recombination rate, and thus a bifurcation is observed.