Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Interdependent Networked Game

Spatial evolution game has traditionally assumed that players interact with direct neighbors on a single network, which is isolated and not influenced by other systems. However, this is not fully consistent with recent research identification that interactions between networks play a crucial rule for the outcome of evolutionary games taking place on them. In this work, we introduce the simple game model into the interdependent networks composed of two networks. By means of imitation dynamics, we display that when the interdependent factor α is smaller than a threshold value α(C), the symmetry of cooperation can be guaranteed. Interestingly, as interdependent factor exceeds α(C), spontaneous symmetry breaking of fraction of cooperators presents itself between different networks. With respect to the breakage of symmetry, it is induced by asynchronous expansion between heterogeneous strategy couples of both networks, which further enriches the content of spatial reciprocity. Moreover, our results can be well predicted by the strategy-couple pair approximation method.