Biased random walk in spatially embedded networks with total cost constraint

Abstract

Abstract We investigate random walk with a bias toward a target node in spatially embedded networks with total cost restriction introduced by Li et al. (2010). Precisely, The network is built from a two-dimension regular lattice to be improved by adding long-range shortcuts with probability P ( r i j ) ∼ r i j − α , where r i j is the Manhattan distance between sites i and j , and α is a variable exponent, the total length of the long-range connections is restricted. Bias is represented as a probability p of the packet or particle to travel at every hop toward the node which has the smallest Manhattan distance to the target node. By studying the mean first passage time (MFPT) for different exponent log 〈 l 〉 , we find that the best transportation condition is obtained with an exponent α = d + 1 ( d = 2 ) for all p . The special phenomena can be possibly explained by the theory of information entropy, we find that when α = d + 1 ( d = 2 ) , the spatial network with total cost restriction becomes an optimal network which has a maximum information entropy. In addition, the scaling of the MFPT with the size of the network is also investigated, and finds that the scaling of the MFPT with L follows a linear distribution for all p > 0 .