Absence of epidemic threshold in scale-free networks with connectivity correlations

Abstract

Random scale-free networks have the peculiar property of being prone to the spreading of infections. Here we provide an exact result showing that a scale-free connectivity distribution with diverging second moment is a sufficient condition to have null epidemic threshold in unstructured networks with either assortative or dissortative mixing. Connectivity correlations result therefore ininfluential for the epidemic spreading picture in these scale-free networks. The present result is related to the divergence of the average nearest neighbors connectivity, enforced by the connectivity detailed balance condition.