Community structure of the pseudofractal web

Abstract

The Ramsey community number $r_κ$ is the smallest network size at which a graph is better described by a partition into communities than by no partition, under a prescribed detection rule. On a scale-free graph this question is confounded: a block model can split the network merely to absorb its degree distribution. I compute $r_κ$ analytically for the deterministic pseudofractal scale-free web of Dorogovtsev, Goltsev, and Mendes, separating genuine community structure from degree heterogeneity with two closed-form detection rules. Under a plain Bernoulli stochastic block model, the web's natural recursive bipartition is unpreferred while small and breaks at $r_κ=1095$ nodes, with a log-evidence growing as $(\ln 3-\tfrac{2}{3}\ln 2)n$. Under a degree-corrected model tested against the configuration-model null, the same partition survives, breaking far earlier at $r_κ=42$, with a log-evidence growing as $(2\ln 3-\tfrac{4}{3}\ln 2)n$ -- exactly twice the plain slope, and independent of the prior. Degree correction reverses the ordering of the candidate cuts, demoting the hub-leaf split and elevating the recursive one. Because the web is self-similar, the best description is not two communities but a nested hierarchy: the degree-corrected evidence keeps rising as the partition is refined, and is maximised at of order $\sqrt{n}$ communities of $\sim\sqrt{n}$ nodes. A purely local recursive rule thus builds true hierarchical community structure, over and above the scale-free degree sequence it also produces, in an exactly solvable setting.