Tricritical point in heterogeneous k-core percolation

Davide Cellai, Aonghus Lawlor, Kenneth A. Dawson, James P. Gleeson

Published 2011-06-08, updated 2011-09-07Version 2

k-core percolation is an extension of the concept of classical percolation and is particularly relevant to understand the resilience of complex networks under random damage. A new analytical formalism has been recently proposed to deal with heterogeneous k-cores, where each vertex is assigned a local threshold k_i. In this paper we identify a binary mixture of heterogeneous k-core which exhibits a tricritical point. We investigate the new scaling scenario and calculate the relevant critical exponents, by analytical and computational methods, for Erdos-Renyi networks and 2d square lattices.