Consider a network consisting of two subnetworks (communities) connected by some external edges. Given the network topology, the community detection problem can be cast as a graph partitioning problem that aims to identify the external edges as the graph cut that separates these two subnetworks. In this paper, we consider a general model where two arbitrarily connected subnetworks are connected by random external edges. Using random matrix theory and concentration inequalities, we show that when one performs community detection via spectral clustering there exists an abrupt phase transition as a function of the random external edge connection probability. Specifically, the community detection performance transitions from almost perfect detectability to low detectability near some critical value of the random external edge connection probability. We derive upper and lower bounds on the critical value and show that the bounds are equal to each other when two subnetwork sizes are identical. Using simulated and experimental data we show how these bounds can be empirically estimated to validate the detection reliability of any discovered communities.
Community detection arises in technological, social, and biological networks. For social science, the goal is to find tightly connected subgraphs in a social network @cite_31 . In @cite_40 , Newman proposes a measure called modularity that evaluates the number of excessive edges of a graph compared with the corresponding degree-equivalent random graph. More specifically, define the modularity matrix as @math , where @math is the degree vector and @math is the number of edges in the graph. The last term @math is the expected adjacency matrix of the degree-equivalent random graph. Similar to spectral clustering, the community indication vector is obtained by performing K-means clustering on the largest eigenvector of @math . We will compare the community detection results of spectral clustering and the modularity method in Sec. .
@cite_40 @cite_31
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We study networks that display community structure -- groups of nodes within which connections are unusually dense. Using methods from random matrix theory, we calculate the spectra of such networks in the limit of large size, and hence demonstrate the presence of a phase transition in matrix methods for community detection, such as the popular modularity maximization method. The transition separates a regime in which such methods successfully detect the community structure from one in which the structure is present but is not detected. By comparing these results with recent analyses of maximum-likelihood methods we are able to show that spectral modularity maximization is an optimal detection method in the sense that no other method will succeed in the regime where the modularity method fails. We consider the problem of detecting communities or modules in networks, groups of vertices with a higher-than-average density of edges connecting them. Previous work indicates that a robust approach to this problem is the maximization of the benefit function known as "modularity" over possible divisions of a network. Here we show that this maximization process can be written in terms of the eigenspectrum of a matrix we call the modularity matrix, which plays a role in community detection similar to that played by the graph Laplacian in graph partitioning calculations. This result leads us to a number of possible algorithms for detecting community structure, as well as several other results, including a spectral measure of bipartite structure in networks and a new centrality measure that identifies those vertices that occupy central positions within the communities to which they belong. The algorithms and measures proposed are illustrated with applications to a variety of real-world complex networks. Community detection is a topic of interest in the study of complex networks such as the protein–protein interaction networks and metabolic networks. In recent years, various methods were proposed to detect community structures of the networks. Here, a kind of local modularity with tunable parameter is derived from the Newman–Girvan modularity by a special self-loop strategy that depends on the community division of the networks. By the self-loop strategy, one can easily control the definition of modularity, and the resulting modularity can be optimized by using the existing modularity optimization algorithms. The local modularity is used as the target function for community detection, and a self-consistent method is proposed for the optimization of the local modularity. We analyze the behaviors of the local modularity and show the validity of the local modularity in detecting community structures on various networks. We prove the existence of an asymptotic phase transition threshold on community detectability for the spectral modularity method [M. E. J. Newman, Phys. Rev. E 74, 036104 (2006) and Proc. National Academy of Sciences. 103, 8577 (2006)] under a stochastic block model. The phase transition on community detectability occurs as the inter-community edge connection probability @math grows. This phase transition separates a sub-critical regime of small @math , where modularity-based community detection successfully identifies the communities, from a super-critical regime of large @math where successful community detection is impossible. We show that, as the community sizes become large, the asymptotic phase transition threshold @math is equal to @math , where @math is the within-community edge connection probability. Thus the phase transition threshold is universal in the sense that it does not depend on the ratio of community sizes. The universal phase transition phenomenon is validated by simulations for moderately sized communities. Using the derived expression for the phase transition threshold we propose an empirical method for estimating this threshold from real-world data.