Simplicial Activity Driven Model

Abstract

Many complex systems find a convenient representation in terms of networks: structures made by pairwise interactions (links) of elements (nodes). For many biological and social systems, elementary interactions involve, however, more than two elements, and simplicial complexes are more adequate to describe such phenomena. Moreover, these interactions often change over time. Here, we propose a framework to model such an evolution: the simplicial activity driven model, in which the building block is a simplex of nodes representing a multiagent interaction. We show analytically and numerically that the use of simplicial structures leads to crucial structural differences with respect to the activity driven model, a paradigmatic temporal network model involving only binary interactions. It also impacts the outcome of paradigmatic processes modeling disease propagation or social contagion. In particular, fluctuations in the number of nodes involved in the interactions can affect the outcome of models of simple contagion processes, contrarily to what happens in the activity driven model.