Extreme fluctuations in noisy task-completion landscapes on scale-free networks

We study the statistics and scaling of extreme fluctuations in noisy task-completion landscapes, such as those emerging in synchronized distributed-computing networks, or generic causally-constrained queuing networks, with scale-free topology. In these networks the average size of the fluctuations becomes finite (synchronized state) and the extreme fluctuations typically diverge only logarithmically in the large system-size limit ensuring synchronization in a practical sense. Provided that local fluctuations in the network are short-tailed, the statistics of the extremes are governed by the Gumbel distribution. We present large-scale simulation results using the exact algorithmic rules, supported by mean-field arguments based on a coarse-grained description.