First encounters on Watts–Strogatz networks and Barabási–Albert networks

The Watts–Strogatz networks are important models that interpolate between regular lattices and random graphs, and Barabási–Albert networks are famous models that explain the origin of the scale-free networks. Here, we consider the first encounters between two particles (e.g., prey A and predator B) embedded in the Watts–Strogatz networks and the Barabási–Albert networks. We address numerically the mean first-encounter time (MFET) while the two particles are moving and the mean first-passage time (MFPT) while the prey is fixed, aiming at uncovering the impact of the prey’s motion on the encounter time, and the conditions where the motion of the prey would accelerate (or slow) the encounter between the two particles. Different initial conditions are considered. In the case where the two particles start independently from sites that are selected randomly from the stationary distribution, on the Barabási–Albert networks, the MFET is far less than the MFPT, and the impact of prey’s motion on the encounter time is enormous, whereas, on the Watts–Strogatz networks (including Erdős-Rényi random networks), the MFET is about 0.5–1 times the MFPT, and the impact of prey’s motion on the encounter time is relatively small. We also consider the case where prey A starts from a fixed site and the predator starts from a randomly drawn site and present the conditions where the motion of the prey would accelerate (or slow) the encounter between the two particles. The relation between the MFET (or MFPT) and the average path length is also discussed.