Minimal percolating sets for mutating infectious diseases

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to the study of the interaction between dynamical systems and percolation models, with views towards the study of viral infections whose virus mutate with time. Recall that r-bootstrap percolation describes a deterministic process where vertices of a graph are infected once r neighbors of it are infected. We generalize this by introducing F(t)-bootstrap percolation, a time-dependent process where the number of neighbouring vertices which need to be infected for a disease to be transmitted is determined by a percolation function F(t) at each time t. After studying some of the basic properties of the model, we consider smallest percolating sets and construct a polynomial-timed algorithm to find one smallest minimal percolating set on finite trees for certain F(t)-bootstrap percolation models.