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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 8: Systems and Networks Biophysics

BP 8.6: Vortrag

Montag, 9. März 2026, 18:15–18:30, BAR/0106

Network-induced control of sustained oscillations in SIRS epidemics — •Samuel Ropert^{1, 2}, Tomas Perez-Acle², and Dirk Brockmann¹ — ¹Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany — ²Universidad San Sebastián, Santiago, Chile

Sustained oscillations in SIRS epidemic models are well understood in well-mixed populations when infectious and immune periods deviate from exponential waiting times. In contrast, the role of contact network structure in generating or suppressing such oscillations has received little attention. Existing work on small-world networks reports oscillations but does not relate them to effective transition-time distributions. This work investigates how network topology shapes oscillatory SIRS dynamics by simulating a stochastic SIRS process on self-similar modular hierarchical (SSMH) networks. These networks interpolate between random-like graphs and strongly modular, hierarchical structures while preserving system size and mean degree. A single structural parameter controls edge placement across hierarchical levels, reshaping effective distances between communities. Preliminary results show that random-like networks support robust, coherent oscillations in global prevalence, whereas increasing hierarchical modularity desynchronizes outbreaks across communities and gradually destroys the global limit cycle, leading to damped or irregular fluctuations. These findings support an interpretation of epidemic oscillations as a synchronization phenomenon of individual SIRS cycles, where network topology promotes or inhibits global coherence by reshaping the time-to-infection distribution through changes in effective distances.

Keywords: Network Epidemics; Synchronization; Hierarchical modular networks; SIRS dynamics; Epidemic oscillations