Explosive percolation in the Achlioptas process, which has attracted much research attention, is known to exhibit a rich variety of critical phenomena that are anomalous from the perspective of continuous phase transitions. Hereby, we show that, in an event-based ensemble, the critical behaviors in explosive percolation are rather clean and obey the standard finite-size scaling theory, except for the large fluctuation of pseudo-critical points. In the fluctuation window, multiple fractal structures emerge and the values can be derived from a crossover scaling theory. Further, their mixing effects account well for the previously observed anomalous phenomena. Making use of the clean scaling in the event-based ensemble, we determine with a high precision the critical points and exponents for a number of bond-insertion rules and clarify ambiguities about their universalities. Our findings hold true for any spatial dimensions.

• Received 20 August 2022
• Accepted 17 March 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.147101