The Contact Process : Competition Models and Boolean Networks

This work is a study of three interacting particle systems that are modified versions of the contact process. The contact process is a spin system defined on a graph and is commonly taken as a model for the spread of an infection in a population; transmission of the infection happens by proximity (contact). The first two models we consider – the grass-bushes-trees model and the multitype contact process – are models for competition between species in Ecology. The third model – annealed approximation to boolean networks – approximately describes the transmission of information among genes in a cell. We consider the grass-bushes-trees model on the set of integers, ℤ. Each point of ℤ is a region of space. In the continuous-time dynamics, at each instant each region can be either empty (state 0) or occupied by an individual of one of two existing species (states 1 and 2). Occupants of both species die at rate 1, leaving their regions empty, and send descendents to neighboring regions at rate λ. An individuals of type 1 may be born on a region previously occupied by an individual of type 2, but the converse is forbidden. We take the "heaviside" initial configuration in which all sites to the left of the origin are occupied by type 1 individuals and all sites to the right of the origin are occupied by type 2 individuals. If the birth of new individuals is allowed to occur at sites that are not adjacent to the parent, and if the rate λ is supercritical for the usual contact process on ℤ, we see the formation of an interface region in which both types coexist. Addressing a conjecture of Cox and Durrett (1995), we prove that the size of this region is stochastically tight. The multitype contact process on ℤ is a process identical to the grass-bushes-trees model in every respect except that no births can occur at previously occupied sites; in particular, the model is symmetric for both species. We again start the process from the heaviside configuration and prove that the size of the interface region is tight. In addition, we prove that the position of the interface, when properly rescaled, converges to Brownian motion. Finally, we give necessary and sufficient conditions on the initial configuration so that one of the two species becomes extinct with probability one and also so that both species are present at all times with positive probability. Lastly, we consider a model proposed by Derrida and Pomeau (1986) and recently studied by Chatterjee and Durrett (2009); it is defined as an approximation to S. Kauffman's boolean networks (1969). The model starts with the choice of a random directed graph on n vertices; each node has r input nodes pointing at it. A discrete time threshold contact process is then considered on this graph: at each instant, each site has probability q of choosing to receive input; if it does, and if at least one of its inputs were occupied by a 1 at the previous instant, then it is labeled with a 1; in all o