dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaNetwork Landscape from a Brownian Particle's Perspective
| Authors | Haijun Zhou |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0302030 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0302030 |
| DOI | 10.1103/PhysRevE.67.041908 |
| Journal | Physical Review E 67: 041908 (2003) |
Abstract
Given a complex biological or social network, how many clusters should it be decomposed into? We define the distance $d_{i,j}$ from node $i$ to node $j$ as the average number of steps a Brownian particle takes to reach $j$ from $i$. Node $j$ is a global attractor of $i$ if $d_{i,j}\leq d_{i,k}$ for any $k$ of the graph; it is a local attractor of $i$, if $j\in E_i$ (the set of nearest-neighbors of $i$) and $d_{i,j}\leq d_{i,l}$ for any $l\in E_i$. Based on the intuition that each node should have a high probability to be in the same community as its global (local) attractor on the global (local) scale, we present a simple method to uncover a network's community structure. This method is applied to several real networks and some discussion on its possible extensions is made.
{
"annotation_id": "857b6ae8-dceb-43bf-8868-826a3838eae9",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:00:42.274000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:00:42.274000Z",
"file_hash": "086b5b9c0120ddd18a54f46f0e0780c371a0f00314ebcd9fe4e87a4afeec32de",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "Given a complex biological or social network, how many clusters should it be\ndecomposed into? We define the distance $d_{i,j}$ from node $i$ to node $j$ as\nthe average number of steps a Brownian particle takes to reach $j$ from $i$.\nNode $j$ is a global attractor of $i$ if $d_{i,j}\\leq d_{i,k}$ for any $k$ of\nthe graph; it is a local attractor of $i$, if $j\\in E_i$ (the set of\nnearest-neighbors of $i$) and $d_{i,j}\\leq d_{i,l}$ for any $l\\in E_i$. Based\non the intuition that each node should have a high probability to be in the\nsame community as its global (local) attractor on the global (local) scale, we\npresent a simple method to uncover a network\u0027s community structure. This method\nis applied to several real networks and some discussion on its possible\nextensions is made.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0302030",
"authors": [
"Haijun Zhou"
],
"categories": [
"physics.bio-ph"
],
"doi": "10.1103/PhysRevE.67.041908",
"journal_ref": "Physical Review E 67: 041908 (2003)",
"title": "Network Landscape from a Brownian Particle\u0027s Perspective",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0302030"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "37ea10bd-f72f-4aba-b51e-5e535d28f254",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}