Degree distributions under general node removal: Power-law or Poisson?

Abstract

Perturbations made to networked systems may result in partial structural loss, such as a blackout in a powergrid system. Investigating the resulting disturbance in network properties is quintessential to understand real networks in action. The removal of nodes is a representative disturbance, but previous studies are seemingly contrasting about its effect on arguably the most fundamental network statistic, the degree distribution. The key question is about the functional form of the degree distributions that can be altered during node removal or sampling. The functional form is decisive in the remaining subnetwork's static and dynamical properties. In this work, we clarify the situation by utilizing the relative entropies with respect to the reference distributions in the Poisson and power-law form, to quantify the distance between the subnetwork's degree distribution and either of the reference distributions. Introducing general sequential node removal processes with continuously different levels of hub protection to encompass a series of scenarios including uniform random removal and preferred or protective (i.e., biased random) removal of the hub, we classify the altered degree distributions starting from various power-law forms by comparing two relative entropy values. From the extensive investigation in various scenarios based on direct node-removal simulations and by solving the rate equation of degree distributions, we discover in the parameter space two distinct regimes, one where the degree distribution is closer to the power-law reference distribution and the other closer to the Poisson distribution.