Phase lag in epidemics on a network of cities

Abstract

We study the synchronisation and phase-lag of fluctuations in the number of infected individuals in a network of cities between which individuals commute. The frequency and amplitude of these oscillations is known to be very well captured by the van Kampen system-size expansion, and we use this approximation to compute the complex coherence function that describes their correlation. We find that, if the infection rate differs from city to city and the coupling between them is not too strong, these oscillations are synchronised with a well defined phase lag between cities. The analytic description of the effect is shown to be in good agreement with the results of stochastic simulations for realistic population sizes.

10 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Stochastic amplification in an epidemic model with seasonal forcing
• Fluctuations and oscillations in a simple epidemic model
• Stochastic effects in a seasonally forced epidemic model
• Stochastic oscillations in models of epidemics on a network of cities
• Endogenous Quasicycles and Stochastic Coherence in a Closed Endemic Model

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• Intertangled stochastic motifs in networks of excitatory-inhibitory units
• The effects of heterogeneity on stochastic cycles in epidemics