Agreement dynamics on small-world networks

Luca Dall'Asta (1) , Andrea Baronchelli (2) , Alain Barrat (1) , Vittorio Loreto (2)

1 LPT - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique d'Orsay [Orsay]
2 Dipartimento di Fisica

In this paper we analyze the effect of a non-trivial topology on the dynamics of the so-called Naming Game, a recently introduced model which addresses the issue of how shared conventions emerge spontaneously in a population of agents. We consider in particular the small-world topology and study the convergence towards the global agreement as a function of the population size $N$ as well as of the parameter $p$ which sets the rate of rewiring leading to the small-world network. As long as $p \gg 1/N$ there exists a crossover time scaling as $N/p^2$ which separates an early one-dimensional-like dynamics from a late stage mean-field-like behavior. At the beginning of the process, the local quasi one-dimensional topology induces a coarsening dynamics which allows for a minimization of the cognitive effort (memory) required to the agents. In the late stages, on the other hand, the mean-field like topology leads to a speed up of the convergence process with respect to the one-dimensional case.

Domaines: Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]; Physique et Société [physics.soc-ph]

Luca Dall'Asta, Andrea Baronchelli, Alain Barrat, Vittorio Loreto. Agreement dynamics on small-world networks. EPL - Europhysics Letters, 2006, 73, pp.969. ⟨10.1209/epl/i2005-10481-7⟩. ⟨hal-00020240v2⟩