Corona product of signed graphs and its application to modeling signed networks

Abstract

The notion of corona of two graphs was introduced by Frucht and Harary in 1970. In this paper, we generalize their definition of corona product of two graphs and introduce corona product of two signed graphs by utilizing the framework of marked graphs, which was introduced by Beineke and Harary in 1978. We study structural and spectral properties of corona product of signed graphs. Further, we define signed corona graphs by considering corona product of a fixed small signed graph with itself iteratively, and we call the small graph as the seed graph for the corresponding corona product graphs. Signed corona graphs can be employed as a signed network generative model for large growing signed networks. We study structural properties of corona graphs that include statistics of signed links, all types of signed triangles and degree distribution. Besides we analyze algebraic conflict of signed corona graphs generated by specially structured seed graphs. Finally, we show that a suitable choice of a seed graph can produce corona graphs which preserve properties of real signed networks.