Non-Markovian epidemic spreading on temporal networks

Abstract

Many empirical studies have revealed that the occurrences of contacts associated with human activities are non-Markovian temporal processes with a heavy tailed inter-event time distribution. Besides, there has been increasing empirical evidence that the infection and recovery rates are time-dependent. However, we lack a comprehensive framework to analyze and understand non-Markovian contact and spreading processes on temporal networks. In this paper, we propose a general formalism to study non-Markovian dynamics on non-Markovian temporal networks. We find that, under certain conditions, non-Markovian dynamics on temporal networks are equivalent to Markovian dynamics on static networks. Interestingly, this result is independent of the underlying network topology.