Tricritical behavior in epidemic dynamics with vaccination
Abstract
We scrutinize the phenomenology arising from a minimal vaccination-epidemic (MVE) dynamics using three methods: mean-field approach, Monte Carlo simulations, and finite-size scaling analysis. The mean-field formulation reveals that the MVE model exhibits either a continuous or a discontinuous active-to-absorbing phase transition, accompanied by bistability and a tricritical point. However, on square lattices, we detect no signs of bistability, and we disclose that the active-to-absorbing state transition has a scaling invariance and critical exponents compatible with the continuous transition of the directed percolation universality class. Additionally, our findings indicate that the tricritical and crossover behaviors of the MVE dynamics belong to the universality class of mean-field tricritical directed percolation.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2306.08135,
title = {Tricritical behavior in epidemic dynamics with vaccination},
author = {Marcelo A. Pires and Cesar I. N. Sampaio Filho and Hans J. Herrmann and José S. Andrade},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.08135},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
12 pages, 6 figures and 2 tables. Version closer to the published paper