2014/11/30 by Brandon Lindley, Brandon S. Lindley, Leah B. Shaw +1 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Computer science #Event (particle physics) #Extinction (optical mineralogy) #Geology #Mathematics #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Paleontology #Physics #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Rare events #Statistics #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/108/58008
published as EPL (Europhysics Letters) Volume 108 Number 5 58008 (2014) · 5 pages 6 figures
openalex publication_date 2014/12/01 · arxiv created 2014/12/08 · arxiv updated 2015/01/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider the problem of extinction processes on random networks with a given structure. For sufficiently large well-mixed populations, the process of extinction of one or more state variable components occurs in the tail of the quasi-stationary probability distribution, thereby making it a rare event. Here we show how to extend the theory of large deviations to random networks to predict extinction times. In particular, we use the theory to find the most probable path leading to extinction. We apply the methodology to epidemic models and discover how mean extinction times scale with epidemiological and network parameters in Erdos-Renyi networks. The results are shown to compare quite well with Monte Carlo simulations of the network in predicting both the most probable paths to extinction and mean extinction times.