title: Dynamical detection of network communities.
abstract: A prominent feature of complex networks is the appearance of communities, also known as modular structures. Specifically, communities are groups of nodes that are densely connected among each other but connect sparsely with others. However, detecting communities in networks is so far a major challenge, in particular, when networks evolve in time. Here, we propose a change in the community detection approach. It underlies in defining an intrinsic dynamic for the nodes of the network as interacting particles (based on diffusive equations of motion and on the topological properties of the network) that results in a fast convergence of the particle system into clustered patterns. The resulting patterns correspond to the communities of the network. Since our detection of communities is constructed from a dynamical process, it is able to analyse time-varying networks straightforwardly. Moreover, for static networks, our numerical experiments show that our approach achieves similar results as the methodologies currently recognized as the most efficient ones. Also, since our approach defines an N-body problem, it allows for efficient numerical implementations using parallel computations that increase its speed performance.
authors.affiliation: Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp), Department of Science and Technology (DCT), 12247-014, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil.
authors.forename: Marcos G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Quiles
authors.affiliation: Laboratório Associado de Computação e Matemática Aplicada, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, 12227-010, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil.
authors.forename: Elbert E N
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Macau
authors.affiliation: Universidad de la República, Instituto de Física Facultad de Ciencias, Iguá 4225, 11400 Montevideo, Uruguay.|University of Aberdeen, King's College, Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, SUPA, AB24 3UE Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Nicolás
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rubido