Epidemics and percolation in small-world networks

Cristopher Moore, M. E. J. Newman

Published 1999-11-30, updated 2000-01-07Version 2

We study some simple models of disease transmission on small-world networks, in which either the probability of infection by a disease or the probability of its transmission is varied, or both. The resulting models display epidemic behavior when the infection or transmission probability rises above the threshold for site or bond percolation on the network, and we give exact solutions for the position of this threshold in a variety of cases. We confirm our analytic results by numerical simulation.