Thermodynamic Characterization of Synchronization-Optimized Oscillator-Networks

We consider a canonical ensemble of synchronization-optimized networks of identical oscillators under external noise. By performing a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation using the Kirchhoff index, i.e., the sum of the inverse eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix (as a graph Hamiltonian of the network), we construct more than 1,000 different synchronization-optimized networks. We then show that the transition from star to core-periphery structure depends on the connectivity of the network, and is characterized by the node degree variance of the synchronization-optimized ensemble. We find that thermodynamic properties such as heat capacity show anomalies for sparse networks.