Phase transition of the contact process on random regular graphs

Abstract: We consider the contact process with infection rate

l a m b d a

on a random

(d + 1)

-regular graph with

n

vertices,

G_{n}

. We study the extinction time

a u_{G_{n}}

(that is, the random amount of time until the infection disappears) as

n

is taken to infinity. We establish a phase transition depending on whether

l a m b d a

is smaller or larger than

l a m b d a_{1} (m a t h b b T^{d})

, the lower critical value for the contact process on the infinite,

(d + 1)

-regular tree: if

l a m b d a < l a m b d a_{1} (m a t h b b T^{d})

,

a u_{G_{n}}

grows logarithmically with

n

, while if

l a m b d a > l a m b d a_{1} (m a t h b b T^{d})

, it grows exponentially with

n

. This result differs from the situation where, instead of

G_{n}

, the contact process is considered on the

d

-ary tree of finite height, since in this case, the transition is known to happen instead at the _upper_ critical value for the contact process on

m a t h b b T^{d}

.

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