Diffusion-limited friendship network: a model for six degrees of separation.
A dynamic model of a society is studied where each person is an uncorrelated and noninteracting random walker. A dynamical random graph represents the acquaintance network of the society whose nodes are the individuals and links are the pairs of mutual friendships. This network exhibits a different percolationlike phase transition in all dimensions. On introducing simultaneous death and birth rates in the population, we show that the friendship network shows the six degrees of separation for ever after where the precise value of the network diameter depends on the death/birth rate. A susceptible-infected-susceptible-type model of disease spreading shows that this society always remains healthy if the population density is less than certain threshold value.
Manna
S S
SS
Satyendra Nath Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences Block-JD, Sector-III, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700098, India.