Phase transition for a non-attractive infection process in heterogeneous environment

Abstract

We consider a non-attractive three state contact process on $\mathbb Z$ and prove that there exists a regime of survival as well as a regime of extinction. In more detail, the process can be regarded as an infection process in a dynamic environment, where non-infected sites are either healthy or passive. Infected sites can recover only if they have a healthy site nearby, whereas non-infected sites may become infected only if there is no healthy and at least one infected site nearby. The transition probabilities are governed by a global parameter $q$: for large $q$, the infection dies out, and for small enough $q$, we observe its survival. The result is obtained by a coupling to a discrete time Markov chain, using its drift properties in the respective regimes.