Discontinuous phase transition in an annealed multi-state majority-vote   model
  In this paper, we generalize the original majority-vote (MV) model with noise from two states to arbitrary $q$ states, where $q$ is an integer no less than two. The main emphasis is paid to the comparison on the nature of phase transitions between the two-state MV (MV2) model and the three-state MV (MV3) model. By extensive Monte Carlo simulation and mean-field analysis, we find that the MV3 model undergoes a discontinuous order-disorder phase transition, in contrast to a continuous phase transition in the MV2 model. A central feature of such a discontinuous transition is a strong hysteresis behavior as noise intensity goes forward and backward. Within the hysteresis region, the disordered phase and ordered phase are coexisting. 
Guofeng Li and Hanshuang Chen and Feng Huang and Chuansheng Shen
cond-mat.stat-mech physics.soc-ph