Characterizing short-term stability for Boolean networks over any distribution of transfer functions

We present a characterization of short-term stability of Kauffman's NK (random) Boolean networks under arbitrary distributions of transfer functions. Given such a Boolean network where each transfer function is drawn from the same distribution, we present a formula that determines whether short-term chaos (damage spreading) will happen. Our main technical tool which enables the formal proof of this formula is the Fourier analysis of Boolean functions, which describes such functions as multilinear polynomials over the inputs. Numerical simulations on mixtures of threshold functions and nested canalyzing functions demonstrate the formula's correctness.