Conservative vs. non-conservative diffusion towards a target in a netw...
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Conservative vs. non-conservative diffusion towards a target in a networked environment
Estrada, E.
The Target Problem, , (2024)
The networked nature of complex systems determines the way in which ’information’ navigates the system from a source to a target. This navigation is governed by the lack of central controllers and the fact that every individual entity ignores the global structure of the system. Consequently, targeted shortest-path searches are almost automatically excluded in these systems, leaving the more blind diffusive processes as the main mechanism for navigating complex networks. Here we show that non-conservative diffusion has some advantages over the ’classical’ (conservative) diffusion for searching a target in a network. The non-conservative nature of the diffusion process is given by the possibility that the network ’communicates’ with the environment in which it is embedded.We use analytical and computational methods to show that non-conservative diffusion uses trajectories which are more prone to find a target than the conservative one.We illustrate the existence of this mechanisms in systems as varied as traffic in urban environments, volume transmission in the brain and communication through online social networks.