SearcharxivSearch

arXiv subjects

L. M. Floria

Publications and source records attributed to L. M. Floria.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

Spreading of Persistent Infections in Heterogeneous Populations

Up to now, the effects of having heterogeneous networks of contacts have been studied mostly for diseases which are not persistent in time, i.e., for diseases where the infectious period can be considered very small compared to the lifetime of an individual. Moreover, all these previous results have been obtained for closed populations, where the number of individuals does not change during the whole duration of the epidemics. Here, we go one step further and analyze, both analytically and numerically, a radically different kind of diseases: those that are persistent and can last for an individual's lifetime. To be more specific, we particularize to the case of Tuberculosis' (TB) infection dynamics, where the infection remains latent for a period of time before showing up and spreading to other individuals. We introduce an epidemiological model for TB-like persistent infections taking into account the heterogeneity inherent to the population structure. This sort of dynamics introduces new analytical and numerical challenges that we are able to sort out. Our results show that also for persistent diseases the epidemic threshold depends on the ratio of the first two moments of the degree distribution so that it goes to zero in a class of scale-free networks when the system approaches the thermodynamic limit.

physics.soc-ph

Residential segregation and cultural dissemination: An Axelrod-Schelling model

In the Axelrod's model of cultural dissemination, we consider mobility of cultural agents through the introduction of a density of empty sites and the possibility that agents in a dissimilar neighborhood can move to them if their mean cultural similarity with the neighborhood is below some threshold. While for low values of the density of empty sites the mobility enhances the convergence to a global culture, for high enough values of it the dynamics can lead to the coexistence of disconnected domains of different cultures. In this regime, the increase of initial cultural diversity paradoxically increases the convergence to a dominant culture. Further increase of diversity leads to fragmentation of the dominant culture into domains, forever changing in shape and number, as an effect of the never ending eroding activity of cultural minorities.

physics.soc-ph

Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma game in Random Scale-Free Graphs

In this paper we study the cooperative behavior of agents playing the Prisoner's Dilemma game in random scale-free networks. We show that the survival of cooperation is enhanced with respect to random homogeneous graphs but, on the other hand, decreases when compared to that found in Barabási-Albert scale-free networks. We show that the latter decrease is related with the structure of cooperation. Additionally, we present a mean field approximation for studying evolutionary dynamics in networks with no degree-degree correlations and with arbitrary degree distribution. The mean field approach is similar to the one used for describing the disease spreading in complex networks, making a further compartmentalization of the strategists partition into degree-classes. We show that this kind of approximation is suitable to describe the behavior of the system for a particular set of initial conditions, such as the placement of cooperators in the higher-degree classes, while it fails to reproduce the level of cooperation observed in the numerical simulations for arbitrary initial configurations.

physics.soc-ph

Social Network Reciprocity as a Phase Transition in Evolutionary Cooperation

In Evolutionary Dynamics the understanding of cooperative phenomena in natural and social systems has been the subject of intense research during decades. We focus attention here on the so-called "Lattice Reciprocity" mechanisms that enhance evolutionary survival of the cooperative phenotype in the Prisoner's Dilemma game when the population of darwinian replicators interact through a fixed network of social contacts. Exact results on a "Dipole Model" are presented, along with a mean-field analysis as well as results from extensive numerical Monte Carlo simulations. The theoretical framework used is that of standard Statistical Mechanics of macroscopic systems, but with no energy considerations. We illustrate the power of this perspective on social modeling, by consistently interpreting the onset of lattice reciprocity as a thermodynamical phase transition that, moreover, cannot be captured by a purely mean-field approach.

physics.soc-ph

Complex cooperative networks from evolutionary preferential attachment

In spite of its relevance to the origin of complex networks, the interplay between form and function and its role during network formation remains largely unexplored. While recent studies introduce dynamics by considering rewiring processes of a pre-existent network, we study network growth and formation by proposing an evolutionary preferential attachment model, its main feature being that the capacity of a node to attract new links depends on a dynamical variable governed in turn by the node interactions. As a specific example, we focus on the problem of the emergence of cooperation by analyzing the formation of a social network with interactions given by the Prisoner's Dilemma. The resulting networks show many features of real systems, such as scale-free degree distributions, cooperative behavior and hierarchical clustering. Interestingly, results such as the cooperators being located mostly on nodes of intermediate degree are very different from the observations of cooperative behavior on static networks. The evolutionary preferential attachment mechanism points to an evolutionary origin of scale-free networks and may help understand similar feedback problems in the dynamics of complex networks by appropriately choosing the game describing the interaction of nodes.

physics.soc-ph

Robustness of Cooperation in the Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma on Complex Networks

Recent studies on the evolutionary dynamics of the Prisoner's Dilemma game in scale-free networks have demonstrated that the heterogeneity of the network interconnections enhances the evolutionary success of cooperation. In this paper we address the issue of how the characterization of the asymptotic states of the evolutionary dynamics depends on the initial concentration of cooperators. We find that the measure and the connectedness properties of the set of nodes where cooperation reaches fixation is largely independent of initial conditions, in contrast with the behavior of both the set of nodes where defection is fixed, and the fluctuating nodes. We also check for the robustness of these results when varying the degree heterogeneity along a one-parametric family of networks interpolating between the class of Erdos-Renyi graphs and the Barabasi-Albert networks.

q-bio.PE

Dynamical Organization of Cooperation in Complex Topologies

In this Letter, we study how cooperation is organized in complex topologies by analyzing the evolutionary (replicator) dynamics of the Prisoner's Dilemma, a two-players game with two available strategies, defection and cooperation, whose payoff matrix favors defection. We show that, asymptotically, the population is partitioned into three subsets: individuals that always cooperate ({\em pure cooperators}), always defect ({\em pure defectors}) and those that intermittently change their strategy. In fact the size of the latter set is the biggest for a wide range of the "stimulus to defect" parameter. While in homogeneous random graphs pure cooperators are grouped into several clusters, in heterogeneous scale-free (SF) networks they always form a single cluster containing the most connected individuals (hubs). Our results give further insights into why cooperation in SF networks is favored.

physics.soc-ph

Discrete Breathers in Two-Dimensional Anisotropic Nonlinear Schrodinger lattices

We study the structure and stability of discrete breathers (both pinned and mobile) in two-dimensional nonlinear anisotropic Schrodinger lattices. Starting from a set of identical one-dimensional systems we develop the continuation of the localized pulses from the weakly coupled regime (strongly anisotropic) to the homogeneous one (isotropic). Mobile discrete breathers are seen to be a superposition of a localized mobile core and an extended background of two-dimensional nonlinear plane waves. This structure is in agreement with previous results on onedimensional breather mobility. The study of the stability of both pinned and mobile solutions is performed using standard Floquet analysis. Regimes of quasi-collapse are found for both types of solutions, while another kind of instability (responsible for the discrete breather fission) is found for mobile solutions. The development of such instabilities is studied, examining typical trajectories on the unstable nonlinear manifold.

nlin.PS

Discrete Solitons in the Salerno Model with competing nonlinearities

We consider a lattice equation (Salerno model) combining onsite self-focusing and intersite self-defocusing cubic terms, which may describe a Bose-Einstein condensate of dipolar atoms trapped in a strong periodic potential. In the continuum approximation, the model gives rise to solitons in a finite band of frequencies, with sechlike solitons near one edge, and an exact peakon solution at the other. A similar family of solitons is found in the discrete system, including a peakon; beyond the peakon, the family continues in the form of cuspons. Stability of the lattice solitons is explored through computation of eigenvalues for small perturbations, and by direct simulations. A small part of the family is unstable (in that case, the discrete solitons transform into robust pulsonic excitations); both peakons and cuspons are stable. The Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion precisely explains the stability of regular solitons and peakons, but does not apply to cuspons. In-phase and out-of-phase bound states of solitons are also constructed. They exchange their stability at a point where the bound solitons are peakons. Mobile solitons, composed of a moving core and background, exist up to a critical value of the strength of the self-defocusing intersite nonlinearity. Colliding solitons always merge into a single pulse.

nlin.PS

Mode-Locking of mobile discrete breathers

We study numerically synchronization phenomena of mobile discrete breathers in dissipative nonlinear lattices periodically forced. When varying the driving intensity, the breather velocity generically locks at rational multiples of the driving frequency. In most cases, the locking plateau coincides with the linear stability domain of the resonant mobile breather and the desynchronization occurs by regular appearance of type I intermittencies. However, some plateaux also show chaotic mobile breathers with locked velocity in the locking region. The addition of a small subharmonic driving tames the locked chaotic solution and enhances the stability of resonant mobile breathers.

nlin.PS

Mobile Localization in nonlinear Schrodinger lattices

Using continuation methods from the integrable Ablowitz-Ladik lattice, we have studied the structure of numerically exact mobile discrete breathers in the standard Discrete Nonlinear Schrodinger equation. We show that, away from that integrable limit, the mobile pulse is dressed by a background of resonant plane waves with wavevectors given by a certain selection rule. This background is seen to be essential for supporting mobile localization in the absence of integrability. We show how the variations of the localized pulse energy during its motion are balanced by the interaction with this background, allowing the localization mobility along the lattice.

cond-mat.soft

Nonintegrable Schrodinger Discrete Breathers

In an extensive numerical investigation of nonintegrable translational motion of discrete breathers in nonlinear Schrodinger lattices, we have used a regularized Newton algorithm to continue these solutions from the limit of the integrable Ablowitz-Ladik lattice. These solutions are shown to be a superposition of a localized moving core and an excited extended state (background) to which the localized moving pulse is spatially asymptotic. The background is a linear combination of small amplitude nonlinear resonant plane waves and it plays an essential role in the energy balance governing the translational motion of the localized core. Perturbative collective variable theory predictions are critically analyzed in the light of the numerical results.

cond-mat.other

Discrete breathers in dissipative lattices

We study the properties of discrete breathers, also known as intrinsic localized modes, in the one-dimensional Frenkel-Kontorova lattice of oscillators subject to damping and external force. The system is studied in the whole range of values of the coupling parameter, from C=0 (uncoupled limit) up to values close to the continuum limit (forced and damped sine-Gordon model). As this parameter is varied, the existence of different bifurcations is investigated numerically. Using Floquet spectral analysis, we give a complete characterization of the most relevant bifurcations, and we find (spatial) symmetry-breaking bifurcations which are linked to breather mobility, just as it was found in Hamiltonian systems by other authors. In this way moving breathers are shown to exist even at remarkably high levels of discreteness. We study mobile breathers and characterize them in terms of the phonon radiation they emit, which explains successfully the way in which they interact. For instance, it is possible to form ``bound states'' of moving breathers, through the interaction of their phonon tails. Over all, both stationary and moving breathers are found to be generic localized states over large values of $C$, and they are shown to be robust against low temperature fluctuations.

nlin.PS

Mirror symmetry breaking through an internal degree of freedom leading to directional motion

We analyze here the minimal conditions for directional motion (net flow in phase space) of a molecular motor placed on a mirror-symmetric environment and driven by a center-symmetric and time-periodic force field. The complete characterization of the deterministic limit of the dissipative dynamics of several realizations of this minimal model, reveals a complex structure in the phase diagram in parameter space, with intertwined regions of pinning (closed orbits) and directional motion. This demonstrates that the mirror-symmetry breaking which is needed for directional motion to occur, can operate through an internal degree of freedom coupled to the translational one.

cond-mat.soft

Intrinsically localized chaos in discrete nonlinear extended systems

The phenomenon of intrinsic localization in discrete nonlinear extended systems, i.e. the (generic) existence of discrete breathers, is shown to be not restricted to periodic solutions but it also extends to more complex (chaotic) dynamical behaviour. We illustrate this with two different forced and damped systems exhibiting this type of solutions: In an anisotropic Josephson junction ladder, we obtain intrinsically localized chaotic solutions by following periodic rotobreather solutions through a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations. In an array of forced and damped van der Pol oscillators, they are obtained by numerical continuation (path-following) methods from the uncoupled limit, where its existence is trivially ascertained, following the ideas of the anticontinuum limit.

chao-dyn