title: System of mobile agents to model social networks.
abstract: We propose a model of mobile agents to construct social networks, based on a system of moving particles by keeping track of the collisions during their permanence in the system. We reproduce not only the degree distribution, clustering coefficient, and shortest path length of a large database of empirical friendship networks recently collected, but also some features related with their community structure. The model is completely characterized by the collision rate, and above a critical collision rate we find the emergence of a giant cluster in the universality class of two-dimensional percolation. Moreover, we propose possible schemes to reproduce other networks of particular social contacts, namely, sexual contacts.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Computational Physics, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 27, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: Marta C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: González
authors.forename: Pedro G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Lind
authors.forename: Hans J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Herrmann
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006608:Hierarchy, Social; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012944:Social Support