Classification of critical phenomena in hierarchical small-world networks

Department of Physics, Emory University - Atlanta, GA 30322, USA

Received: 3 January 2015
Accepted: 20 April 2015

Abstract

A classification of critical behavior is provided in systems for which the renormalization group equations are control-parameter dependent. It describes phase transitions in networks with a recursive, hierarchical structure but appears to apply also to a wider class of systems, such as conformal field theories. Although these transitions generally do not exhibit universality, three distinct regimes of characteristic critical behavior can be discerned that combine an unusual mixture of finite- and infinite-order transitions. In the spirit of Landau's description of a phase transition, the problem can be reduced to the local analysis of a cubic recursion equation, here, for the renormalization group flow of some generalized coupling. Among other insights, this theory explains the often-noted prevalence of the so-called inverted Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions in complex networks. As a demonstration, a one-parameter family of Ising models on hierarchical networks is considered.