Explosive percolation in thresholded networks

•Explosive percolation can be observed in real networks formed by thresholding.•Explosive percolation is possible when edges are added in a particular order.•The proposed method does not involve a random process.•Examples of explosive percolation with real network data are shown.

Explosive percolation in a network is a phase transition where a large portion of nodes becomes connected with an addition of a small number of edges. Although extensively studied in random network models and reconstructed real networks, explosive percolation has not been observed in a more realistic scenario where a network is generated by thresholding a similarity matrix describing between-node associations. In this report, I examine construction schemes of such thresholded networks, and demonstrate that explosive percolation can be observed by introducing edges in a particular order.