The asymmetric contact process (Q1106139)

The author investigates the limiting behaviour in distribution of a family of contact processes on \({\mathbb{Z}}\), in which each infected site recovers at rate 1, but until then exerts a force of infection \(\lambda_ r\) on its right hand neighbor and \(\lambda_{\ell}\) on its left hand neighbour: thus \textit{T. E. Harris}' [Ann. Probab. 2, 969-988 (1974; Zbl 0334.60052)] basic contact process \((\lambda_ r=\lambda_{\ell})\) and the one-sided contact process \((\lambda_{\ell}=0)\) are special cases. It is shown that there are regions \(A,B_ 1,B_ 2\) of \((\lambda_ r,\lambda_{\ell})\)-values such that the process is ergodic for values in A, behaves like a super-critical one-sided process in \(B_ 1\) and like a super-critical basic process in \(B_ 2\). A different kind of behaviour is also established for values on the boundary of \(B_ 1\) and \(B_ 2\). Some information about the shape and size of \(B_ 1\) and \(B_ 2\) is also obtained.