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arXiv:2508.20895

Multicritical Infection Spreading

Leone V. Luzzatto, Juan Felipe Barrera López, István A. Kovács

Published Aug 28, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

The contact process is a simple infection spreading model showcasing an out-of-equilibrium phase transition between a macroscopically active and an inactive phase. Such absorbing state phase transitions are often sensitive to the presence of quenched disorder. Traditionally, a phase transition in the disordered contact process is either triggered by dilution or by locally varying the infection rate. However, when both factors play an important role, a multicritical point emerges that remains poorly understood. Here, we study the multicritical contact process by large-scale Monte Carlo simulations in two and three dimensions. The multicritical behavior is found to be universal and exhibits ultra-slow, activated dynamical scaling, with exponents consistent with those predicted by the strong disorder renormalization group method. This finding indicates that the multicritical contact process belongs to the same universality class as the multicritical quantum Ising model, in both two and three dimensions.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2508.20895

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The contact process is a simple infection spreading model showcasing an out-of-equilibrium phase transition between a macroscopically active and an inactive phase. Such absorbing state phase transitions are often sensitive to the presence of quenched disorder. Traditionally, a phase transition in the disordered contact process is either triggered by dilution or by locally varying the infection rate. However, when both factors play an important role, a multicritical point emerges that remains poorly understood. Here, we study the multicritical contact process by large-scale Monte Carlo simulations in two and three dimensions. The multicritical behavior is found to be universal and exhibits ultra-slow, activated dynamical scaling, with exponents consistent with those predicted by the strong disorder renormalization group method. This finding indicates that the multicritical contact process belongs to the same universality class as the multicritical quantum Ising model, in both two and three dimensions.
The absorbing-state transition in the three-dimensional contact process with and without quenched randomness is investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. In the clean case, a reweighting technique is combined with a careful extrapolation of the data to infinite time to determine with high accuracy the critical behavior in the three-dimensional directed percolation universality class. In the presence of quenched spatial disorder, our data demonstrate that the absorbing-state transition is governed by an unconventional infinite-randomness critical point featuring activated dynamical scaling. The critical behavior of this transition does not depend on the disorder strength, i.e., it is universal. Close to the disordered critical point, the dynamics is characterized by the nonuniversal power laws typical of a Griffiths phase. We compare our findings to the results of other numerical methods, and we relate them to a general classification of phase transitions in disordered systems based on the rare region dimensionality.
We study the effects of spatially inhomogeneous diffusion on the non-equilibrium phase transition in the contact process. The directed-percolation critical point in the contact process is known to be stable against the addition of a spatially uniform diffusion term. Correspondingly, we find quenched randomness in the diffusion rates to be irrelevant by power counting in the field-theory of the contact process. However, large-scale Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that such diffusion disorder destabilizes the clean directed percolation critical point. Instead, the transition belongs to the same infinite-randomness universality class as the contact process with disorder in the infection or healing rates. To explain these results, we develop an effective model with an infinite diffusion rate; it shows that diffusion disorder generates an effective disorder in the healing rates. The same mechanism also appears in the field-theoretic description: Whereas diffusion disorder is irrelevant by power-counting, it generates standard random-mass disorder under renormalization. We discuss the validity of this mechanism for other absorbing state transitions and non-equilibrium phase transitions in general.
Quantum multicritical points (QMCPs) emerge at the junction of two or more quantum phase transitions due to the interplay of disparate fluctuations, leading to novel universality classes. While quantum critical points have been well characterized, our understanding of QMCPs is much more limited, even though they might be less elusive to study experimentally than quantum critical points. Here, we characterize the QMCP of an interacting heterogeneous quantum system in two and three dimensions, the ferromagnetic random transverse-field Ising model (RTIM). The QMCP of the RTIM emerges due to both geometric and quantum fluctuations, studied here numerically by the strong disorder renormalization group method. The QMCP of the RTIM is found to exhibit ultraslow, activated dynamic scaling, governed by an infinite disorder fixed point. This ensures that the obtained multicritical exponents tend to the exact values at large scales, while also being universal---i.e., independent of the form of disorder---providing a solid theoretical basis for future experiments.
Abstract We have studied the critical properties of the contact process on a square lattice with quenched site dilution by Monte Carlo simulations. This was achieved by generating in advance the percolating cluster, through the use of an appropriate epidemic model, and then by the simulation of the contact process on the top of the percolating cluster. The dynamic critical exponents were calculated by assuming an activated scaling relation and the static exponents by the usual power law behavior. Our results are in agreement with the prediction that the quenched diluted contact process belongs to the universality class of the random transverse-field Ising model. We have also analyzed the model and determined the phase diagram by the use of a mean-field theory that takes into account the correlation between neighboring sites.
We have studied the phase transition of the contact process near a multiple junction of M semi-infinite chains by Monte Carlo simulations. As opposed to the continuous transitions of the translationally invariant (M=2) and semi-infinite (M=1) system, the local order parameter is found to be discontinuous for M>2. Furthermore, the temporal correlation length diverges algebraically as the critical point is approached, but with different exponents on the two sides of the transition. In the active phase, the estimate is compatible with the bulk value, while in the inactive phase it exceeds the bulk value and increases with M. The unusual local critical behavior is explained by a scaling theory with an irrelevant variable, which becomes dangerous in the inactive phase. Quenched spatial disorder is found to make the transition continuous in agreement with earlier renormalization group results.
We investigate the influence of time-varying environmental noise, i.e., temporal disorder, on the nonequilibrium phase transition of the contact process. Combining a real-time renormalization group, scaling theory, and large scale Monte-Carlo simulations in one and two dimensions, we show that the temporal disorder gives rise to an exotic critical point. At criticality, the effective noise amplitude diverges with increasing time scale, and the probability distribution of the density becomes infinitely broad, even on a logarithmic scale. Moreover, the average density and survival probability decay only logarithmically with time. This infinite-noise critical behavior can be understood as the temporal counterpart of infinite-randomness critical behavior in spatially disordered systems, but with exchanged roles of space and time. We also analyze the generality of our results, and we discuss potential experiments.