Collective behavior of multi-agent network dynamic systems under internal and external random perturbations (Q974542)

The authors investigate a broad class of collective behavior in a multi-agent interacting dynamical system. Their principal interests are in the qualitative and quantitative properties such as cohesion, robustness, convergence and stability. Utilizing energy-like functions and the theory of differential inequalities, they derive explicit conditions that are sufficient, algebraically simple and computable. The methods do not require the explicit knowledge of solution processes. The qualitative results such as cohesion, convergence and stability are readily applicable to a broad class of social networks.