  We consider a modification of the contact process incorporating higher-order
reaction terms. The original contact process exhibits a non-equilibrium phase
transition belonging to the universality class of directed percolation. The
incorporated higher-order reaction terms lead to a non-trivial phase diagram.
In particular, a line of continuous phase transitions is separated by a
tricritical point from a line of discontinuous phase transitions. The
corresponding tricritical scaling behavior is analyzed in detail, i.e., we
determine the critical exponents, various universal scaling functions as well
as universal amplitude combinations.
