2008/05/31 by Shai Carmi, Zhenhua Wu, Shlomo Havlin +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Diffusion and Search Dynamics #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cs.DM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/84/28005
published as Europhys. Lett. 84, 28005 (2008)
openalex publication_date 2008/10/01 · arxiv created 2008/11/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We investigate the electrical current and flow (number of parallel paths) between two sets of n sources and n sinks in complex networks. We derive analytical formulas for the average current and flow as a function of n . We show that for small n , increasing n improves the total transport in the network, while for large n bottlenecks begin to form. For the case of flow, this leads to an optimal n * above which the transport is less efficient. For current, the typical decrease in the length of the connecting paths for large n compensates for the effect of the bottlenecks. We also derive an expression for the average flow as a function of n under the common limitation that transport takes place between specific pairs of sources and sinks.