A Universal Route to Explosive Phenomena

Understand

Critical transitions are observed in many complex systems.

• This includes the onset of synchronization in a network of coupled oscillators or the emergence an epidemic state within a population.
• "Explosive" first-order transitions have caught particular attention in a variety of systems when classical models are generalized by incorporating additional effects.
• Here we give a mathematical argument that the emergence of such first-order transitions is not surprising but rather a universally expected effect: Varying a classical model along a generic two-parameter family must lead to a change of the criticality.