Scaling behavior of the disordered contact process

Abstract

The one-dimensional contact process with weak to intermediate quenched disorder in its transmission rates is investigated via quasistationary Monte Carlo simulation. We address the contested questions of both the nature of dynamical scaling, conventional or activated, as well as of universality of critical exponents by employing a scaling analysis of the distribution of lifetimes and the quasistationary density of infection. We find activated scaling to be the appropriate description for intermediate to strong disorder. Critical exponents taken at face value are disorder dependent and approach the values expected for the limit of strong disorder as predicted by strong-disorder renormalization-group analysis of the process. However, no definitive conclusion about the nature of exponents is possible from this numerical approach on its own.