Random growth lattice filling model of percolation: a crossover from continuous to discontinuous transition

Abstract: A random growth lattice filling model of percolation with touch and stop growth rule is developed and studied numerically on a two dimensional square lattice. Nucleation centers are continuously added one at a time to the empty sites and the clusters are grown from these nucleation centers with a tunable growth probability g. As the growth probability g is varied from 0 to 1 two distinct regimes are found to occur. For g\le 0.5, the model exhibits continuous percolation transitions as ordinary percolation whereas for g\ge 0.8 the model exhibits discontinuous percolation transitions. The discontinuous transition is characterized by discontinuous jump in the order parameter, compact spanning cluster and absence of power law scaling of cluster size distribution. Instead of a sharp tricritical point, a tricritical region is found to occur for 0.5 < g < 0.8 within which the values of the critical exponents change continuously till the crossover from continuous to discontinuous transition is completed.