paper

Payoff-Driven Coevolution and Oscillatory Dynamics in Hypergraph

arXiv:2605.25016 · doi:10.1016/j.chaos.2026.118516

Abstract

We study a coevolutionary public goods game on a dynamic hypergraph, where an individual's payoff directly determines the number of hyperedges it can join. In the proposed mechanism, nodes adjust their participation according to the group payoffs of hyperedges, and hyperedges that remain occupied only by defectors for a sufficiently long time collapse and are rebuilt by selecting new members based on the current payoffs of nodes. This adaptive rule captures the performance-driven reorganization of group interactions in evolving collective systems. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we show that the cooperation fraction and average hyperdegree may converge to steady states with stochastic fluctuations or exhibit persistent oscillations, depending on the parameter regime. The steady-state outcomes are strongly nonmonotonic with respect to the structural adaptation parameters: cooperation is sustained only when the rate of link formation is properly balanced. If structural adaptation is too fast, frequent contacts between cooperators and defectors destroy cooperative clusters; if it is too slow, cooperators lack sufficient structural support to expand. This differs from the conventional expectation in static settings that larger benefit parameters always facilitate cooperation. We further introduce spectral entropy to quantify the regularity of the oscillatory dynamics and identify limit-cycle behavior in the phase space in certain regimes. These results suggest that adaptive higher-order restructuring can both promote and destabilize cooperation, offering insight into oscillatory cooperation and recurrent prosperity-decline cycles in real group-structured systems.

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