Correlations in interacting systems with a network topology

Abstract

We study pair correlations in cooperative systems placed on complex networks. We show that usually in these systems, the correlations between two interacting objects (e.g., spins), separated by a distance $\ell$, decay, on average, faster than $1/(\ell z_\ell)$. Here $z_\ell$ is the mean number of the $\ell$-th nearest neighbors of a vertex in a network. This behavior, in particular, leads to a dramatic weakening of correlations between second and more distant neighbors on networks with fat-tailed degree distributions, which have a divergent number $z_2$ in the infinite network limit. In this case, only the pair correlations between the nearest neighbors are observable. We obtain the pair correlation function of the Ising model on a complex network and also derive our results in the framework of a phenomenological approach.