Coexistence of critical sensitivity and subcritical specificity can yield optimal population coding

The vicinity of phase transitions selectively amplifies weak stimuli, yielding optimal sensitivity to distinguish external input. Along with this enhanced sensitivity, enhanced levels of fluctuations at criticality reduce the specificity of the response. Given that the specificity of the response is largely compromised when the sensitivity is maximal, the overall benefit of criticality for signal processing remains questionable. Here it is shown that this impasse can be solved by heterogeneous systems incorporating functional diversity, in which critical and subcritical components coexist. The subnetwork of critical elements has optimal sensitivity, and the subnetwork of subcritical elements has enhanced specificity. Combining segregated features extracted from the different subgroups, the resulting collective response can maximise the tradeoff between sensitivity and specificity measured by the dynamic-range-to-noise-ratio. Although numerous benefits can be observed when the entire system is critical, our results highlight that optimal performance is obtained when only a small subset of the system is at criticality.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Google matrix analysis of the multiproduct world trade network

Using the United Nations COMTRADE database \cite{comtrade} we construct the Google matrix $G$ of multiproduct world trade between the UN countries and analyze the properties of trade flows on this network for years 1962 - 2010. This construction, based on Markov chains, treats all countries on equal democratic grounds independently of their richness and at the same time it considers the contributions of trade products proportionally to their trade volume. We consider the trade with 61 products for up to 227 countries. The obtained results show that the trade contribution of products is asymmetric: some of them are export oriented while others are import oriented even if the ranking by their trade volume is symmetric in respect to export and import after averaging over all world countries. The construction of the Google matrix allows to investigate the sensitivity of trade balance in respect to price variations of products, e.g. petroleum and gas, taking into account the world connectivity of trade links. The trade balance based on PageRank and CheiRank probabilities highlights the leading role of China and other BRICS countries in the world trade in recent years. We also show that the eigenstates of $G$ with large eigenvalues select specific trade communities.Comment: 19 pages, 25 figure

Google matrix of the world trade network

Using the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database [http://comtrade.un.org/db/] we construct the Google matrix of the world trade network and analyze its properties for various trade commodities for all countries and all available years from 1962 to 2009. The trade flows on this network are classified with the help of PageRank and CheiRank algorithms developed for the World Wide Web and other large scale directed networks. For the world trade this ranking treats all countries on equal democratic grounds independent of country richness. Still this method puts at the top a group of industrially developed countries for trade in {\it all commodities}. Our study establishes the existence of two solid state like domains of rich and poor countries which remain stable in time, while the majority of countries are shown to be in a gas like phase with strong rank fluctuations. A simple random matrix model provides a good description of statistical distribution of countries in two-dimensional rank plane. The comparison with usual ranking by export and import highlights new features and possibilities of our approach.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures. More detailed data and high definition figures are available on the website: http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.fr/QWLIB/tradecheirank/index.htm

Destruction of Anderson localization by nonlinearity in kicked rotator at different effective dimensions

We study numerically the frequency modulated kicked nonlinear rotator with effective dimension $d=1,2,3,4$. We follow the time evolution of the model up to $10^9$ kicks and determine the exponent $\alpha$ of subdiffusive spreading which changes from $0.35$ to $0.5$ when the dimension changes from $d=1$ to $4$. All results are obtained in a regime of relatively strong Anderson localization well below the Anderson transition point existing for $d=3,4$. We explain that this variation of the exponent is different from the usual $d-$dimensional Anderson models with local nonlinearity where $\alpha$ drops with increasing $d$. We also argue that the renormalization arguments proposed by Cherroret N et al. arXiv:1401.1038 are not valid.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Quantum Gibbs distribution from dynamical thermalization in classical nonlinear lattices

We study numerically time evolution in classical lattices with weak or moderate nonlinearity which leads to interactions between linear modes. Our results show that in a certain strength range a moderate nonlinearity generates a dynamical thermalization process which drives the system to the quantum Gibbs distribution of probabilities, or average oscillation amplitudes. The effective dynamical temperature of the lattice varies from large positive to large negative values depending on energy of initially excited modes. This quantum Gibbs distribution is drastically different from usually expected energy equipartition over linear modes corresponding to a regime of classical thermalization. Possible experimental observations of this dynamical thermalization are discussed for cold atoms in optical lattices, nonlinear photonic lattices and optical fiber arrays.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures. Small modifs., video abstract 107MB at http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.fr/dima/video/gibbs2013.mp