Motivated by the Benjamini-Schramm non-unicity of percolation conjecture we study the following question. For a given finitely generated non-amenable group $Γ$, does there exist a generating set $S$ such that the Cayley graph $(Γ,S)$, without loops and multiple edges, has non-unique percolation, i.e., $p_c(Γ,S)<p_u(Γ,S)$? We show that this is true if $Γ$ contains an infinite normal subgroup $N$ such that $Γ/ N$ is non-amenable. Moreover for any finitely generated group $G$ containing $Γ$ there exists a generating set $S'$ of $G$ such that $p_c(G,S')<p_u(G,S')$. In particular this applies to free Burnside groups $B(n,p)$ with $n \geq 2, p \geq 665$. We also explore how various non-amenability numerics, such as the isoperimetric constant and the spectral radius, behave on various growing generating sets in the group.
We prove that the value of the critical probability for percolation on an abelian Cayley graph is determined by its local structure. This is a partial positive answer to a conjecture of Schramm: the function pc defined on the set of Cayley graphs of abelian groups of rank at least 2 is continuous for the Benjamini-Schramm topology. The proof involves group-theoretic tools and a new block argument.
We define the notion of rough Cayley graph for compactly generated locally compact groups in terms of quasi-actions. We construct such a graph for any compactly generated locally compact group using quasi-lattices and show uniqueness up to quasi-isometry. A class of examples is given by the Cayley graphs of cocompact lattices in compactly generated groups. As an application, we show that a compactly generated group has polynomial growth if and only if its rough Cayley graph has polynomial growth (same for intermediate and exponential growth). Moreover, a unimodular compactly generated group is…
We prove that the set of possible values for the percolation threshold $p_c$ of Cayley graphs has a gap at 1 in the sense that there exists $\varepsilon_0>0$ such that for every Cayley graph $G$ one either has $p_c(G)=1$ or $p_c(G) \leq 1-\varepsilon_0$. The proof builds on the new approach of Duminil-Copin, Goswami, Raoufi, Severo & Yadin to the existence of phase transition using the Gaussian free field, combined with the finitary version of Gromov's theorem on the structure of groups of polynomial growth of Breuillard, Green & Tao.
The objective of this series is to study metric geometric properties of (coarse) disjoint unions of amenable Cayley graphs. We employ the Cayley topology and observe connections between large scale structure of metric spaces and group properties of Cayley accumulation points. In this Part I, we prove that a disjoint union has property A of G. Yu if and only if all groups appearing as Cayley accumulation points in the space of marked groups are amenable. As an application, we construct two disjoint unions of finite special linear groups (and unimodular linear groups) with respect to two systems…
In this paper we study spectral properties of adjacency and Laplace operators on percolation subgraphs of Cayley graphs of amenable, finitely generated groups. In particular we describe the asymptotic behaviour of the integrated density of states (spectral distribution function) of these random Hamiltonians near the spectral minimum. The first part of the note discusses various aspects of the quantum percolation model, subsequently we formulate a series of new results, and finally we outline the strategy used to prove our main theorem.
We define a probability measure preserving and r-discrete groupoid that is associated to every invariant point process on a locally compact and second countable group. This groupoid governs certain factor processes of the point process, in particular the existence of Cayley factor graphs. With this method we are able to show that point processes on amenable groups admit all (and only admit) Cayley factor graphs of amenable groups, and that the Poisson point process on groups with Kazhdan's Property (T) admits no Cayley factor graphs. This gives examples of pmp countable Borel equivalence relat…
We study the low energy asymptotics of periodic and random Laplace operators on Cayley graphs of amenable, finitely generated groups. For the periodic operator the asymptotics is characterised by the van Hove exponent or zeroth Novikov-Shubin invariant. The random model we consider is given in terms of an adjacency Laplacian on site or edge percolation subgraphs of the Cayley graph. The asymptotic behaviour of the spectral distribution is exponential, characterised by the Lifshitz exponent. We show that for the adjacency Laplacian the two invariants/exponents coincide. The result holds also fo…
A one-by-one exhaustion is a combinatorial/geometric condition which excludes eigenvalues from the spectra of Laplace and Schrödinger operators on graphs. Isoperimetric inequalities in graphs with a cocompact automorphism group provide an upper bound on the von Neumann dimension of the space of eigenfunctions. Any finitely generated indicable amenable group has a Cayley graph without eigenvalues. There exists a finitely generated group G with finite generating sets S and S' such that the adjacency operator of the Cayley graph of (G,S) has no eigenvalue while the adjacency operator of the Cayle…
By the density of a finite graph we mean its average vertex degree. For an $m$-generated group, the density of its Cayley graph in a given set of generators, is the supremum of densities taken over all its finite subgraphs. It is known that a group with $m$ generators is amenable iff the density of the corresponding Cayley graph equals $2m$. A famous problem on the amenability of R.\,Thompson's group $F$ is still open. What is known due to the result by Belk and Brown, is that the density of its Cayley graph in the standard set of group generators $\{x_0,x_1\}$, is at least $3.5$. This estimat…
Using properties of their Cayley graphs, specific examples of Ozawa kernels are constructed for both free and amenable groups, thus showing that these groups satisfy Property O. It is deduced both that these groups are exact and satisfy Yu's Property A.
This paper demonstrates the uniformly finite homology developed by Block and Weinberger and its relationship to amenable spaces via applications to the Cayley graph of Thompson's Group F. In particular, a certain class of subgraph of F is shown to be non-amenable. This shows that if F is amenable, these subsets (which include every finitely generated submonoid of the positive monoid of F) must necessarily have measure zero.
We introduce right generating sets, Cayley graphs, growth functions, types and rates, and isoperimetric constants for left homogeneous spaces equipped with coordinate systems; characterise right amenable finitely right generated left homogeneous spaces with finite stabilisers as those whose isoperimetric constant is $0$; and prove that finitely right generated left homogeneous spaces with finite stabilisers of sub-exponential growth are right amenable, in particular, quotient sets of groups of sub-exponential growth by finite subgroups are right amenable.
Bootstrap percolation on an arbitrary graph has a random initial configuration, where each vertex is occupied with probability p, independently of each other, and a deterministic spreading rule with a fixed parameter k: if a vacant site has at least k occupied neighbors at a certain time step, then it becomes occupied in the next step. This process is well-studied on Z^d; here we investigate it on regular and general infinite trees and on non-amenable Cayley graphs. The critical probability is the infimum of those values of p for which the process achieves complete occupation with positive pro…
We show that the critical probability for percolation on a d-regular non-amenable graph of large girth is close to the critical probability for percolation on an infinite d-regular tree. This is a special case of a conjecture due to O. Schramm on the locality of p_c. We also prove a finite analogue of the conjecture for expander graphs.
We study some properties of the Cayley graph of the R.Thompson's group F in generators $x_0$, $x_1$. We show that the density of this graph, that is, the least upper bound of the average vertex degree of its finite subgraphs is at least 3. It is known that a 2-generated group is not amenable if and only if the density of the corresponding Cayley graph is strictly less than 4. It is well known this is also equivalent to the existence of a doubling function on the Cayley graph. This means there exists a mapping from the set of vertices into itself such that for some constant $K>0$, each vertex m…
This article presents a method for finding the critical probability $p_c$ for the Bernoulli bond percolation on graphs with the so-called tree-like structure. Such a graph can be decomposed into a tree of pieces, each of which has finitely many isomorphism classes. This class of graphs includes the Cayley graphs of amalgamated products, HNN extensions or general groups acting on trees. It also includes all transitive graphs with more than one end. The idea of the method is to find a multi-type Galton--Watson branching process (with a parameter $p$) which has finite expected population size if …
We study branching random walks on Cayley graphs. A first result is that the trace of a transient branching random walk on a Cayley graph is a.s. transient for the simple random walk. In addition, it has a.s. critical percolation probability less than one and exponential volume growth. The proofs rely on the fact that the trace induces an invariant percolation on the family tree of the branching random walk. Furthermore, we prove that the trace is a.s. strongly recurrent for any (non-trivial) branching random walk. This follows from the observation that the trace, after appropriate biasing of …
In this thesis, I am going to consider Bernoulli percolation on graphs admitting vertex-transitive actions of groups of isometries of d-dimensional hyperbolic spaces H^d. In the first chapter, I give an overview concerning percolation and its terminology. In the separate introduction to each of the other chapters, I explain its contents more precisely, giving also some preliminaries needed therein. In the second chapter, I prove the existence of a non-trivial non-uniqueness phase of Bernoulli percolation on Cayley graphs for a wide class of Coxeter reflection groups of finite type polyhedra in…
In this article we study percolation on the Cayley graph of a free product of groups. The critical probability $p_c$ of a free product $G_1*G_2*...*G_n$ of groups is found as a solution of an equation involving only the expected subcritical cluster size of factor groups $G_1,G_2,...,G_n$. For finite groups these equations are polynomial and can be explicitly written down. The expected subcritical cluster size of the free product is also found in terms of the subcritical cluster sizes of the factors. In particular, we prove that $p_c$ for the Cayley graph of the modular group $\hbox{PSL}_2(\mat…
We introduce the notion of connection thickness of spheres in a Cayley graph, related to dead-ends and their retreat depth. It was well-known that connection thickness is bounded for finitely presented one-ended groups. We compute that for natural generating sets of lamplighter groups on a line or on a tree, connection thickness is linear or logarithmic respectively. We show that it depends strongly on the generating set. We give an example where the metric induced at the (finite) thickness of connection gives diameter of order $n^2$ to the sphere of radius $n$. We also discuss the rarity of d…
The connective constant $μ(G)$ of an infinite transitive graph $G$ is the exponential growth rate of the number of self-avoiding walks from a given origin. The relationship between connective constants and amenability is explored in the current work. Various properties of connective constants depend on the existence of so-called 'graph height functions', namely: (i) whether $μ(G)$ is a local function on certain graphs derived from $G$, (ii) the equality of $μ(G)$ and the asymptotic growth rate of bridges, and (iii) whether there exists a terminating algorithm for approximating $μ(G)$ to a give…
The objective of this series is to study metric geometric properties of disjoint unions of amenable Cayley graphs by group properties of the Cayley accumulation points in the space of marked groups. In this Part II, we prove that a disjoint union admits a fibred coarse embedding into a Hilbert space (in a generalized sense) if and only if the Cayley boundary of the sequence in the space of marked groups is uniformly a-T-menable. We furthermore extend this result to ones with other target spaces. By combining our main results with constructions of Arzhantseva--Osajda and Osajda, we construct tw…
In this paper we study geometric versions of Burnside's Problem and the von Neumann Conjecture. This is done by considering the notion of a translation-like action. Translation-like actions were introduced by Kevin Whyte as a geometric analogue of subgroup containment. Whyte proved a geometric version of the von Neumann Conjecture by showing that a finitely generated group is non-amenable if and only if it admits a translation-like action by any (equivalently every) non-abelian free group. We strengthen Whyte's result by proving that this translation-like action can be chosen to be transitive …
In this paper, we prove that Bernoulli percolation on bounded degree graphs with isoperimetric dimension $d>4$ undergoes a non-trivial phase transition (in the sense that $p_c<1$). As a corollary, we obtain that the critical point of Bernoulli percolation on infinite quasi-transitive graphs (in particular, Cayley graphs) with super-linear growth is strictly smaller than 1, thus answering a conjecture of Benjamini and Schramm. The proof relies on a new technique consisting in expressing certain functionals of the Gaussian Free Field (GFF) in terms of connectivity probabilities for percolation m…
Given the Cayley graph of a finitely generated group $G$, with respect to a presentation $G^α$ with $n$ generators, the quotient of the rank of the fundamental group of subgraphs of the Cayley graph by the cardinality of the set of vertices of the subgraphs gives rise to the definition of the normalized cyclomatic quotient $Ξ(G^α)$. The asymptotic behavior of this quotient is similar to the asymptotic behavior of the quotient of the cardinality of the boundary of the subgraph by the cardinality of the subgraph. Using Følner's criterion for amenability one gets that $Ξ(G^α)$ vanishes for i…
A measure-scaling quasi-isometry between two connected graphs is a quasi-isometry that is quasi-$κ$-to-one in a natural sense for some $κ>0$. For non-amenable graphs, all quasi-isometries are quasi-$κ$-to-one for any $κ>0$, while for amenable ones there exists at most one possible such $κ$. For an amenable graph $X$, we show that the set of possible $κ$ forms a subgroup of $\mathbb{R}_{>0}$ that we call the (measure-)scaling group of $X$. This group is invariant under measure-scaling quasi-isometries. In the context of Cayley graphs, this implies for instance that two uniform lattices in a giv…
We answer three questions posed in a paper by Babson and Benjamini. They introduced a parameter $C_G$ for Cayley graphs $G$ that has significant application to percolation. For a minimal cutset of $G$ and a partition of this cutset into two classes, take the minimal distance between the two classes. The supremum of this number over all minimal cutsets and all partitions is $C_G$. We show that if it is finite for some Cayley graph of the group then it is finite for any (finitely generated) Cayley graph. Having an exponential bound for the number of minimal cutsets of size $n$ separating $o$ fro…
The Schreier graphs of Thompson's group F with respect to the stabilizer of 1/2 and generators x_0 and x_1, and of its unitary representation in L_2([0,1]) induced by the standard action on the interval [0,1] are explicitly described. The coamenability of the stabilizers of any finite set of dyadic rational numbers is established. The induced subgraph of the right Cayley graph of the positive monoid of F containing all the vertices of the form x_nv, where n>=0 and v is any word over the alphabet {x_0, x_1}, is constructed. It is proved that the latter graph is non-amenable.
We show that for any finitely generated non-amenable group and any $\varepsilon>0$, there exists some finite symmetric generating set with spectral radius less than $\varepsilon$. We give applications to percolation theory and the theory of operator spaces.
An invariant random subgroup of the countable group Γ is a random subgroup of Γ whose distribution is invariant under conjugation by all elements of Γ. We prove that for a nonamenable invariant random subgroup H, the spectral radius of every finitely supported random walk on Γ is strictly less than the spectral radius of the corresponding random walk on Γ/H. This generalizes a result of Kesten who proved this for normal subgroups. As a byproduct, we show that for a Cayley graph G of a linear group with no amenable normal subgroups, any sequence of finite quotients of G that spectrally approxim…
Let Gamma be a finitely generated nilpotent group. We consider three closely related problems: (i) the asymptotic cone for an equivariant ergodic family of inner metrics on Gamma, generalizing Pansu's theorem; (ii) the limit shapes for First Passage Percolation for general (not necessarily independent) ergodic processes on edges of a Cayley graph of Gamma; (iii) a sub-additive ergodic theorem over a general ergodic Gamma-action. The limiting objects are given in terms of a Carnot-Caratheodory metric on the graded nilpotent group associated to the Mal'cev completion of Gamma.
We prove a general version of the amenability conjecture in the unified setting of a Gromov hyperbolic group G acting properly cocompactly either on its Cayley graph, or on a CAT(-1)-space. Namely, for any subgroup H of G, we show that H is co-amenable in G if and only if their exponential growth rates (with respect to the prescribed action) coincide. For this, we prove a quantified, representation-theoretical version of Stadlbauer's amenability criterion for group extensions of a topologically transitive subshift of finite type, in terms of the spectral radii of the classical Ruelle transfer …
A $k$-free like group is a $k$-generated group $G$ with a sequence of $k$-element generating sets $Z_n$ such that the girth of $G$ relative to $Z_n$ is unbounded and the Cheeger constant of $G$ relative to $Z_n$ is bounded away from 0. By a recent result of Benjamini-Nachmias-Peres, this implies that the critical bond percolation probability of the Cayley graph of $G$ relative to $Z_n$ tends to $1/(2k-1)$ as $n\to \infty$. Answering a question of Benjamini, we construct many non-free groups that are $k$-free like for all sufficiently large $k$.
Shalom and Tao showed that a polynomial upper bound on the size of a single, large enough ball in a Cayley graph implies that the underlying group has a nilpotent subgroup with index and degree of polynomial growth both bounded effectively. The third and fourth authors proved the optimal bound on the degree of polynomial growth of this subgroup, at the expense of making some other parts of the result ineffective. In the present paper we prove the optimal bound on the degree of polynomial growth without making any losses elsewhere. As a consequence, we show that there exist explicit positive nu…
We construct small cancellation labellings for some infinite sequences of finite graphs of bounded degree. We use them to define infinite graphical small cancellation presentations of groups. This technique allows us to provide examples of groups with exotic properties: - We construct the first examples of finitely generated coarsely non-amenable groups (that is, groups without Guoliang Yu's Property A) that are coarsely embeddable into a Hilbert space. Moreover, our groups act properly on CAT(0) cubical complexes. - We construct the first examples of finitely generated groups, with expanders …
The firefighter game problem on locally finite connected graphs was introduced by Bert Hartnell. The game on a graph $G$ can be described as follows: let $f_n$ be a sequence of positive integers; an initial fire starts at a finite set of vertices; at each (integer) time $n\geq 1$, $f_n$ vertices which are not on fire become protected, and then the fire spreads to all unprotected neighbors of vertices on fire; once a vertex is protected or is on fire, it remains so for all time intervals. The graph $G$ has the \emph{$f_n$-containment property} if every initial fire admits an strategy that prote…
We give lower and upper bounds for the separation profile (introduced by Benjamini, Schramm & Timár) for various graphs using the isoperimetric profile, growth and Hilbertian compression. For graphs which have polynomial isoperimetry and growth, we show that the separation profile $\mathrm{Sep}(n)$ is also bounded by powers of $n$. For many amenable groups, we show a lower bound in $n/ \log(n)^a$ and, for any group which has a non-trivial compression exponent in an $L^p$-space, an upper bound in $n/ \log(n)^b$. We show that solvable groups of exponential growth cannot have a separation profile…
