Current Redistribution in Resistor Networks: Fat-Tail Statistics in Regular and Small-World Networks

The redistribution of electrical currents in resistor networks after single-bond failures is analyzed in terms of current-redistribution factors that are shown to depend only on the topology of the network and on the values of the bond resistances. We investigate the properties of these current-redistribution factors for regular network topologies (e.g. $d$-dimensional hypercubic lattices) as well as for small-world networks. In particular, we find that the statistics of the current redistribution factors exhibits a fat-tail behavior, which reflects the long-range nature of the current redistribution as determined by Kirchhoff's circuit laws.