Spatial perturbations of one-dimensional spin systems (Q1593626)

Nearest neighbour and additive stochastic spin systems on \(\mathbb Z^+\) (with configurations in \(\{0,1\}^{\mathbb Z^+}\equiv \) power set of \(\mathbb Z^+\)) described by flip rates at each site are considered. It is shown that if the flip rates for two such Markov processes are the same except for the ``death rates'' at finite number of sites, then ``one of the finite processes survives'' (the probability that the trajectory starting with \(\{x\}\subset \mathbb Z^+\) at time zero consists of nonempty configurations only is positive) if and only if the other finite process survives. The equivalence of the equality of all the weak limits of initial distributions for both processes is also proved (the equivalence of ``survival of the infinite processes''). A similar result is proved for the case of a biased voter model on \(\mathbb Z\). The proofs are based on the graphical representation using independent Poisson processes and on the notion of a dual process.