McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

Statistical Physics of Complex, Evolving Networks

Andrei Fluerasu

McGill

In this (informal! :-) talk I will review a couple of recent articles on a topic that received quite a bit of attention during the last few years - the statistical physics of complex, evolving networks. Complex networks describe a wide range of systems in nature and society. Much quoted examples include, but are not limited to: the internet and the WWW, the network of citations of scientific papers, and the network of scientific collaborations, the web of human sexual contacts, protein folding, power and neural networks, etc. There are even some surprising connections between the physics of complex networks and other problems in statistical physics like the BE condensation. While traditionally networks were modelled as random graphs it is increasingly recognized that the topology and evolution of complex networks is governed by robust principles.

Wednesday, January 23rd 2002, 12:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Boardroom (room 104)