Approaching the thermodynamic limit in equilibrated scale-free networks.

We discuss how various models of scale-free complex networks approach their limiting properties when the size N of the network grows. We focus mainly on equilibrated networks and their finite-size degree distributions. Our results show that the position of the cutoff in the degree distribution, k_{cutoff} , scales with N in a different way than predicted for N-->infinity ; that is, subleading corrections to the scaling k_{cutoff} approximately N;{alpha} are strong even for networks of order N approximately 10;{9} nodes. We observe also a logarithmic correction to the scaling for degenerated graphs with the degree distribution pi(k) approximately k;{-3} . On the other hand, the distribution of the maximal degree k_{max} may have a different scaling than the cutoff and, moreover, it approaches the thermodynamic limit much faster. We argue that k_{max} approximately N;{alpha;{'}} with an exponent alpha;{'}=min[alpha,1(gamma-1)] , where gamma is the exponent in the power law pi(k) approximately k;{-gamma} . We also present some results on the cutoff function and the distribution of the maximal degree in equilibrated networks.