The two-stage contact process (Q1305409)

One considers a multitype interacting particle system, called the two-stage contact process, which is a natural generalization of the contact process. In the present situation, individuals in the population have two life stages, young and adult. Only adults can give birth and each new offspring is young. Transition from young to adult occurs at constant rate, and individuals die at rates that depend on their life stage. The author constructs the two-stage contact process graphically via families of independent Poisson processes and defines the dual process which is important for the analysis of the system. He proves a monotonicity property for the two-stage contact process and some additivity property. Finally, he proves the existence of nontrivial critical parameters which delimit the survival region in parameter space.