Drastic disorder-induced reduction of signal amplification in scale-free networks

Understanding information transmission across a network is a fundamental task for controlling and manipulating both biological and manmade information-processing systems. Here we show how topological resonant-like amplification effects in scale-free networks of signaling devices are drastically reduced when phase disorder in the external signals is considered. This is demonstrated theoretically by means of a starlike network of overdamped bistable systems, and confirmed numerically by simulations of scale-free networks of such systems. The taming effect of the phase disorder is found to be sensitive to the amplification's strength, while the topology-induced amplification mechanism is robust against this kind of quenched disorder in the sense that it does not significantly change the values of the coupling strength where amplification is maximum in its absence.R. C. and P. J. M. acknowledge financial support from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Mineco, Spain) through FIS2012-34902 and FIS2011-25167 projects, respectively. R.C. acknowledges financial support from the Junta de Extremadura (JEx, Spain) through project GR10045.Peer Reviewe