Regions of reduced dynamics in dynamic networks

Journal article, 2021

We consider complex networks where the dynamics of each interacting agent is given by a nonlinear vector field and the connections between the agents are defined according to the topology of undirected simple graphs. The aim of the work is to explore whether the asymptotic dynamic behavior of the entire network can be fully determined from the knowledge of the dynamic properties of the underlying constituent agents. While the complexity that arises by connecting many nonlinear systems hinders us to analytically determine general solutions, we show that there are conditions under which the dynamical properties of the constituent agents are equivalent to the dynamical properties of the entire network. This feature, which depends on the nature and structure of both the agents and connections, leads us to define the concept of regions of reduced dynamics, which are subsets of the parameter space where the asymptotic solutions of a network behave equivalently to the limit sets of the constituent agents. On one hand, we discuss the existence of regions of reduced dynamics, which can be proven in the case of diffusive networks of identical agents with all-to-all topologies and conjectured for other topologies. On the other hand, using three examples, we show how to locate regions of reduced dynamics in parameter space. In simple cases, this can be done analytically through bifurcation analysis and in other cases we exploit numerical continuation methods.