An article written jointly by Gábor Pete and Ádám Timár, together with Sigurdur Örn Stefánsson, Ivan Bonamassan, and Máron Pósfai was included in the selection published on 06/07/2024, which presents the most interesting articles in the applied physics and mathematics category of Nature Communications.
Mathematicians from the Rényi Institute, in the DYNASNET collaboration with network scientists, have made important progress on modelling and analysing the structure of physical networks, with papers in Nature Physics and Nature Communications with the latter highlighted in the most interesting articles in the applied physics and mathematics category of the journal.
.
In the recent concept of a physical network, not only is the graph embedded in space, but the vertices and edges are non-overlapping physical objects. This is very relevant for modelling brain connectomes, vascular networks, river networks, and so on. In Pósfai, Szegedy et al, the focus is on how link physicality causes a jamming transition in the structure of the network, even when the total volume of the links is negligible. In Pete, Timár et al, a network-of-networks model is introduced, where randomly evolving subgraphs of an ambient graph connect to each other through point-like synapses, and a new tool, the physical Laplacian is offered to measure the impact of physicality on network structure.
Two neurons in a fruit-fly brain with the connecting synapses.
The Danube river network.
Congratulation!