Critical and oscillatory behavior of a system of smart preys and predators

ROZENFELD, A.F.; ALBANO, E.V.

PHYSICAL REVIEW E

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Año: 2001 vol. 63 p. 1 - 6

1539-3755

It is shown that a system of smart preys and predators exhibits irreversible phase transitions between aregime of prey-predator coexistence and an state where predator extinction is observed. Within the coexistenceregime, the system exhibits a transition between a regime where the densities of species remain constant andanother with self-sustained oscillations, respectively. This transition is located by means of a combined treatmentinvolving ®nite-size scaling and Fourier transforms. Furthermore, it is shown that the transition can berationalized in terms of the standard percolation theory. The existence of an oscillatory regime in the thermodynamiclimit, which is in contrast to previous ®ndings of Boccara et al. @Phys. Rev. E 50, 4531 ~1994!#, maybe due to subtle differences between the studied models.