J Stat Phys DOI 10.1007/s10955-017-1887-7 Sparse Maximum-Entropy Random Graphs with a Given Power-Law Degree Distribution Pim van der Hoorn1 · Gabor Lippner2 · Dmitri Krioukov3 Received: 30 May 2017 / Accepted: 26 September 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract Even though power-law or close-to-power-law degree distributions are ubiqui- tously observed in a great variety of large real networks, the mathematically satisfactory treatment of random power-law graphs satisfying basic statistical requirements of realism is still lacking. These requirements are: sparsity, exchangeability, projectivity, and unbiased- ness. The last requirement states that entropy of the graph ensemble must be maximized under the degree distribution constraints. Here we prove that the hypersoft configuration model, belonging to the class of random graphs with latent hyperparameters, also known as inhomogeneous random graphs or W-random graphs, is an ensemble of random power-law graphs that are sparse, unbiased, and either exchangeable or projective. The proof of their unbiasedness relies on generalized graphons, and on mapping the problem of maximization of the normalized Gibbs entropy of a random graph ensemble, to the graphon entropy maxi- mization problem, showing that the two entropies converge to each other in the large-graph limit. Keywords Sparse random graphs · Power-law degree distributions · Maximum-entropy graphs Mathematics Subject Classification 05C80 · 05C82 · 54C70 B Pim van der Hoorn
[email protected] 1 Department of Physics, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave, MS 210-177, Boston, MA 02115, USA 2 Department of Mathematics, Northeastern University, Boston, USA 3 Departments of Physics, Mathematics, and Electrical & Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, USA 123 P.