Synchronization in Complex Dynamical Networks and Its Applications

In the past few years, the discovery of small-world and scale-free properties of many natural and artificial complex networks has stimulated increasing interest in further studying the underlying organizing principles of various complex networks. This has led to significant advances in better understanding the relationship between the topology and the dynamics of such complex networks. This paper reports our recent research work on the synchronization phenomenon in dynamical networks with small-world and scale-free connections. The economic-cycle synchronous phenomenon in the World Trade Web, a scale-free type of network, is used to illustrate an application of the network synchronization mechanism. keywords: Synchronization, small-world, scale-free, world trade web, economic-cycle [Submitted to the Conference on Growing Networks and Graphs in Statistical Physics, Finance, Biology and Social Systems, Roma, Sept. 1-5, 2003]