Epidemic Phase Transitions in the Zero-Range Process

We consider a model for the spread of an infection within an interacting particle system on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, generalizing a framework introduced by Kesten and Sidoravicius to a zero-range process in equilibrium with density $\rho > 0$. In our model, at any time, individuals are either healthy or infected. The infection spreads instantaneously whenever infected and healthy particles occupy the same site, while infected particles heal independently at rate $\delta > 0$. We investigate the extinction-survival phase diagram of this process starting from a configuration where only the particles at the origin are infected. For every fixed positive healing rate, we prove that the infection becomes extinct almost surely if the density $\rho$ is sufficiently small and survives with positive probability if $\rho$ is sufficiently large, establishing the existence of a non-trivial critical density. At sufficiently high densities, survival occurs even under instantaneous healing. We also show that, for every positive density, the infection survives when the healing rate is sufficiently small.