Effect of network topology on the ordering dynamics of voter models

Abstract

We introduce and study the reverse voter model, a dynamics for spin variables similar to the well-known voter dynamics. The difference is in the way neighbors influence each other: once a node is selected and one among its neighbors chosen, the neighbor is made equal to the selected node, while in the usual voter dynamics the update goes in the opposite direction. The reverse voter dynamics is studied analytically, showing that on networks with degree distribution decaying as k^{-nu}, the time to reach consensus is linear in the system size N for all nu>2. The consensus time for link-update voter dynamics is computed as well. We verify the results numerically on a class of uncorrelated scale-free graphs.