Limited resolution and multiresolution methods in complex network community detection

Abstract

Detecting community structure in real-world networks is a challenging problem. Recently, it has been shown that the resolution of methods based on optimizing a modularity measure or a corresponding energy is limited; communities with sizes below some threshold remain unresolved. One possibility to go around this problem is to vary the threshold by using a tuning parameter, and investigate the community structure at variable resolutions. Here, we analyze the resolution limit and multiresolution behavior for two different methods: a q-state Potts method proposed by Reichard and Bornholdt, and a recent multiresolution method by Arenas, Fernandez, and Gomez. These methods are studied analytically, and applied to three test networks using simulated annealing.