A second-order phase transition in the complete graph stochastic epidemic model

We show that this system evolves towards a, approximately Gaussian, stationary distribution of infected sites whose mean and variance can be analytically estimated. Also, we find that the average fraction of infected sites, x, is zero for transmission probabilities below the critical value αc=1-e-β/N and grows linearly with α for 0<α-αc⪡1. A sharp peak observed in Monte Carlo simulations of the variance of the number of infected sites as a function of α allows us to classify this dynamical phase transition as second order with x playing the role of an order parameter. Some consequences of this model to the dynamics of highly connected complex systems, such as the brain cortex, are also discussed.