Stochastic block model in a new critical regime and the interacting multiplicative coalescent

This work exhibits a novel phase transition for the classical stochastic block model (SBM). In addition we study the SBM in the corresponding near-critical regime, and find the scaling limit for the component sizes. The two-parameter stochastic process arising in the scaling limit, an analogue of the standard Aldous' multiplicative coalescent, is interesting in its own right. We name it the (standard) Interacting Multiplicative Coalescent. To the best of our knowledge, this object has not yet appeared in the literature.