Phase transitions with infinitely many absorbing states in complex networks

Abstract

We investigate the properties of the threshold contact process (TCP), a process showing an absorbing-state phase transition with infinitely many absorbing states, on random complex networks. The finite-size scaling exponents characterizing the transition are obtained in a heterogeneous mean-field (HMF) approximation and compared with extensive simulations, particularly in the case of heterogeneous scale-free networks. We observe that the TCP exhibits the same critical properties as the contact process, which undergoes an absorbing-state phase transition to a single absorbing state. The accordance among the critical exponents of different models and networks leads to conjecture that the critical behavior of the contact process in a HMF theory is a universal feature of absorbing-state phase transitions in complex networks, depending only on the locality of the interactions and independent of the number of absorbing states. The conditions for the applicability of the conjecture are discussed considering a parallel with the susceptible-infected-susceptible epidemic spreading model, which in fact belongs to a different universality class in complex networks.