Cornell University Probability Seminar

Spring 2011

Mondays in 406 Malott Hall at 4:00 PM, unless otherwise noted.

February 21

Jonathon Peterson, Cornell University
The contact process on the complete graph with random, vertex-dependent, infection rates

The contact process is an interacting particle system that is a very simple model for the spread of an infection or disease on a network. Traditionally, the contact process was studied on homogeneous graphs such as the integer lattice or regular trees. However, due to the non-homogeneous structure of many real-world networks, there is currently interest in studying interacting particle systems in non-homogeneous graphs and environments. In this talk, I consider the contact process on the complete graph, where the vertices are assigned (random) weights and the infection rate between two vertices is proportional to the product of their weights. This set-up allows for some interesting analysis of the process and detailed calculations of phase transitions and critical exponents.