Effects of accelerating growth on the evolution of weighted complex networks

Abstract

Many real systems possess accelerating statistics where the total number of edges grows faster than the network size. In this paper, we propose a simple weighted network model with accelerating growth. We derive analytical expressions for the evolutions and distributions for strength, degree, and weight, which are relevant to accelerating growth. We also find that accelerating growth determines the clustering coefficient of the networks. Interestingly, the distributions for strength, degree, and weight display a transition from scale-free to exponential form when the parameter with respect to accelerating growth increases from a small to large value. All the theoretical predictions are successfully contrasted with extensive numerical simulations.