Quantum preferential attachment

Quantum Physics arXiv:2512.22542 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 27 Dec 2025] Title:Quantum preferential attachment Authors:Tingyu Zhao, Balázs Maga, Pierfrancesco Dionigi, Gergely Ódor, Kyle Soni, Anastasiya Salova, Bingjie Hao, Miklós Abért, István A. Kovács View a PDF of the paper titled Quantum preferential attachment, by Tingyu Zhao and 8 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:The quantum internet is a rapidly developing technological reality, yet, it remains unclear what kind of quantum network structures might emerge. Since indirect quantum communication is already feasible and preserves absolute security of the communication channel, a new node joining the quantum network does not need to connect directly to its desired target. Instead, in our proposed quantum preferential attachment model, it uniformly randomly connects to any node within the proximity of the target, including, but not restricted to, the target itself. This local flexibility is found to qualitatively change the global network behavior, leading to two distinct classes of complex network architectures, both of which are small-world, but neither of which is scale-free. Our numerical findings are supported by rigorous analytic results, in a framework that incorporates quantum and classical variants of preferential attachment in a unified phase diagram. Besides quantum networks, we expect that our results will have broad implications for classical scenarios where there is flexibility in establishing new connections. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Probability (math.PR); Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems (nlin.AO) Cite as: arXiv:2512.22542 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2512.22542v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.22542 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Tingyu Zhao [view email] [v1] Sat, 27 Dec 2025 10:01:41 UTC (1,410 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Quantum preferential attachment, by Tingyu Zhao and 8 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-12 Change to browse by: math math.PR nlin nlin.AO References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)