Structured Networks and Coarse‐Grained Descriptions: A Dynamical Perspective
This chapter focuses on the rich interplay between network structure and a dynamics acting on top of the network as a means of identifying modules in the network or describing the effect that modules can have on the dynamical behavior of a system. One of the main motivations for identifying modular structures in networks is that they provide a simplified, coarse‐grained description of the system structure. The chapter first introduces the general mathematical setup for the types of dynamics the authors consider throughout the chapter. It then focuses on the influence of graph structure on the dynamics taking place on the network, focusing on three concepts that allow readers to gain insight into this notion. The chapter also discusses how to use dynamical processes unfolding on the network to detect meaningful network substructures. It shows how different such measures can be related to seemingly different methods for community detection and coarse‐graining proposed in the literature.