We derive analytically the scaling behavior in the thermodynamic limit of the number of nonfrozen and relevant nodes in the most general class of critical Kauffman networks for any number of inputs per node, and for any choice of the probability distribution for the Boolean functions. By defining and analyzing a stochastic process that determines the frozen core we can prove that the mean number of nonfrozen nodes in any critical network with more than one input per node scales with the network size $N$ as $N^{2∕3}$, with only $N^{1∕3}$ nonfrozen nodes having two nonfrozen inputs and the number of nonfrozen nodes with more than two inputs being finite in the thermodynamic limit. Using these results we can conclude that the mean number of relevant nodes increases for large $N$ as $N^{1∕3}$, with only a finite number of relevant nodes having two relevant inputs, and a vanishing fraction of nodes having more than three of them. It follows that all relevant components apart from a finite number are simple loops, and that the mean number and length of attractors increases faster than any power law with network size.

• Received 23 June 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.74.046101