Continuum contact process and influence of impurity on the critical behavior in absorbing-state phase transitions in two dimensions.

Abstract

We study via Monte Carlo simulations the influence of quenched and mobile impurities in the contact process (CP) on two-dimensional lattice and continuum systems. In the lattice system, the effect of mobile impurity was studied for the density n_{i}=0.2 and two selected values of hopping probability for impurity particles, w=0.5 and 1. In the continuum system, the CP was defined by distributing spherical impurity particles of diameter σ_{i} and number density n_{i}=0.2 and active particles of diameter unity and number density 1-n_{i} on a square substrate with periodic boundaries. In each dynamic process, a particle is selected at random; the active particle either creates with a rate λ an offspring at a distance r (1≤r≤1.5) from the active particle or annihilates with a unit rate, and the impurity particle hops a distance r (0≤r≤1), both along randomly selected directions. We found that the lattice CP shows power-law behaviors with varying critical exponents depending on the values of w. For the continuum CP with quenched impurity, the critical behavior followed the activated scaling scenario, whereas with mobile impurity usual power-law behaviors were observed but the critical exponents varied depending on the values of σ_{i}.