We study the distribution of finite clusters in slightly supercritical ($p \downarrow p_c$) Bernoulli bond percolation on transitive nonamenable graphs, proving in particular that if $G$ is a transitive nonamenable graph satisfying the $L^2$ boundedness condition ($p_c<p_{2\to 2}$) and $K$ denotes the cluster of the origin then there exists $δ>0$ such that $$ \mathbf{P}_p(n \leq |K| < \infty) \asymp n^{-1/2} \exp\left[ -Θ\Bigl( |p-p_c|^2 n\Bigr) \right] $$ and \[ \mathbf{P}_p(r \leq \operatorname{Rad}(K) < \infty) \asymp r^{-1} \exp\left[ -Θ\Bigl( |p-p_c| r\Bigr) \right] \] for every $p\in (p_c-δ,p_c+δ)$ and $n,r\geq 1$, where all implicit constants depend only on $G$. We deduce in particular that the critical exponents $γ'$ and $Δ'$ describing the rate of growth of the moments of a finite cluster as $p \downarrow p_c$ take their mean-field values of $1$ and $2$ respectively.
These results apply in particular to Cayley graphs of nonelementary hyperbolic groups, to products with trees, and to transitive graphs of spectral radius $ρ<1/2$. In particular, every finitely generated nonamenable group has a Cayley graph to which these results apply. They are new for graphs that are not trees. The corresponding facts are yet to be understood on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ even for $d$ very large. In a second paper in this series, we will apply these results to study the geometric and spectral properties of infinite slightly supercritical clusters in the same setting.
Let $G$ be a connected, locally finite, transitive graph, and consider Bernoulli bond percolation on $G$. We prove that if $G$ is nonamenable and $p > p_c(G)$ then there exists a positive constant $c_p$ such that \[\mathbf{P}_p(n \leq |K| < \infty) \leq e^{-c_p n}\] for every $n\geq 1$, where $K$ is the cluster of the origin. We deduce the following two corollaries: 1. Every infinite cluster in supercritical percolation on a transitive nonamenable graph has anchored expansion almost surely. This answers positively a question of Benjamini, Lyons, and Schramm (1997). 2. For transitive nonamenabl…
Let $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ be a sequence of transitive infinite connected graphs with $\sup\limits_{n\geq 1} p_c(G_n) < 1,$ where each $p_c(G_n)$ is bond percolation critical probability on $G_n.$ Schramm (2008) conjectured that if $G_n$ converges locally to a transitive infinite connected graph $G,$ then $p_c(G_n) \rightarrow p_c(G)$ as $n\rightarrow\infty.$ We prove the conjecture when $G$ satisfies two rough uniformities, and $\{G_n\}_{n=1}^{\infty}$ is uniformly nonamenable.
Using percolation techniques, Gaboriau and Lyons recently proved that every countable, discrete, nonamenable group $Γ$ contains measurably the free group $\mathbf F_2$ on two generators: there exists a probability measure-preserving, essentially free, ergodic action of $\mathbf F_2$ on $([0, 1]^Γ, λ^Γ)$ such that almost every $Γ$-orbit of the Bernoulli shift splits into $\mathbf F_2$-orbits. A combination of this result and works of Ioana and Epstein shows that every countable, discrete, nonamenable group admits uncountably many non-orbit equivalent actions.
We study infinite ``$+$'' or ``$-$'' clusters for an Ising model on an connected, transitive, non-amenable, planar, one-ended graph $G$ with finite vertex degree. If the critical percolation probability $p_c^{site}$ for the i.i.d.~Bernoulli site percolation on $G$ is less than $\frac{1}{2}$, we find an explicit region for the coupling constant of the Ising model such that there are infinitely many infinite ``$+$''-clusters and infinitely many infinite ``$-$''-clusters, while the random cluster representation of the Ising model has no infinite 1-clusters. If $p_c^{site}>\frac{1}{2}$, we obtain …
We prove rigorously that the ferromagnetic Ising model on any nonamenable Cayley graph undergoes a continuous (second-order) phase transition in the sense that there is a unique Gibbs measure at the critical temperature. The proof of this theorem is quantitative and also yields power-law bounds on the magnetization at and near criticality. Indeed, we prove more generally that the magnetization $\langle σ_o \rangle_{β,h}^+$ is a locally Hölder-continuous function of the inverse temperature $β$ and external field $h$ throughout the non-negative quadrant $(β,h)\in [0,\infty)^2$. As a second appli…
We study the growth and isoperimetry of infinite clusters in slightly supercritical Bernoulli bond percolation on transitive nonamenable graphs under the $L^2$ boundedness condition ($p_c<p_{2\to 2}$). Surprisingly, we find that the volume growth of infinite clusters is always purely exponential (that is, the subexponential corrections to growth are bounded) in the regime $p_c<p<p_{2\to 2}$, even when the ambient graph has unbounded corrections to exponential growth. For $p$ slightly larger than $p_c$, we establish the precise estimates \begin{align*} \mathbf{E}_p \left[ \# B_\mathrm{int}(v,r)…
Two vertices are said to be finitely connected if they belong to the same cluster and this cluster is finite. We derive sharp asymptotics for finite connection probabilities for supercritical Bernoulli bond percolation on Z^2.
Let $G=(V,E)$ be a connected, locally finite, transitive graph, and consider Bernoulli bond percolation on $G$. In recent work, we conjectured that if $G$ is nonamenable then the matrix of critical connection probabilities $T_{p_c}(u,v)=\mathbb{P}_{p_c}(u\leftrightarrow v)$ is bounded as an operator $T_{p_c}:L^2(V)\to L^2(V)$ and proved that this conjecture holds for several classes of graphs. We also noted in that work that the conjecture implies two older conjectures, namely that percolation on transitive nonamenable graphs always has a nontrivial nonuniqueness phase, and that critical perco…
The random-cluster model is a dependent percolation model that has applications in the study of Ising and Potts models. In this paper, several new results are obtained for the random-cluster model on nonamenable graphs with cluster parameter $q\geq 1$. Among these, the main ones are the absence of percolation for the free random-cluster measure at the critical value, and examples of planar regular graphs with regular dual where $\pc^\f (q) > \pu^\w (q)$ for $q$ large enough. The latter follows from considerations of isoperimetric constants, and we give the first nontrivial explicit calculation…
We consider the internal diffusion limited aggregation (IDLA) process on the infinite cluster in supercritical Bernoulli bond percolation on Euclidean lattices. It is shown that the process on the cluster behaves like it does on the Euclidean lattice, in that the aggregate covers all the vertices in a Euclidean ball around the origin, such that the ratio of vertices in this ball to the total number of particles sent out approaches one almost surely.
We extend some of the fundamental results about percolation on unimodular nonamenable graphs to nonunimodular graphs. We show that they cannot have infinitely many infinite clusters at critical Bernoulli percolation. In the case of heavy clusters, this result has already been established, but it also follows from one of our results. We give a general necessary condition for nonunimodular graphs to have a phase with infinitely many heavy clusters. We present an invariant spanning tree with $p_c=1$ on some nonunimodular graph. Such trees cannot exist for nonamenable unimodular graphs. We show a …
Hermon and Hutchcroft have recently proved the long-standing conjecture that in Bernoulli(p) bond percolation on any nonamenable transitive graph G, at any p > p_c(G), the probability that the cluster of the origin is finite but has a large volume n decays exponentially in n. A corollary is that all infinite clusters have anchored expansion almost surely. They have asked if these results could hold more generally, for any finite energy ergodic invariant percolation. We give a counterexample, an invariant percolation on the 4-regular tree.
We prove the sharpness of the phase transition for speed in the biased random walk on the supercritical percolation cluster on Z^d. That is, for each d at least 2, and for any supercritical parameter p > p_c, we prove the existence of a critical strength for the bias, such that, below this value, the speed is positive, and, above the value, it is zero. We identify the value of the critical bias explicitly, and, in the sub-ballistic regime, we find the polynomial order of the distance moved by the particle. Each of these conclusions is obtained by investigating the geometry of the traps that ar…
In this paper, we study the abundance of self-avoiding paths of a given length on a supercritical percolation cluster on $\bbZ^d$. More precisely, we count $Z_N$ the number of self-avoiding paths of length $N$ on the infinite cluster, starting from the origin (that we condition to be in the cluster). We are interested in estimating the upper growth rate of $Z_N$, $\limsup_{N\to \infty} Z_N^{1/N}$, that we call the connective constant of the dilute lattice. After proving that this connective constant is a.s.\ non-random, we focus on the two-dimensional case and show that for every percolation p…
We investigate Laplacians on supercritical bond-percolation graphs with different boundary conditions at cluster borders. The integrated density of states of the Dirichlet Laplacian is found to exhibit a Lifshits tail at the lower spectral edge, while that of the Neumann Laplacian shows a van Hove asymptotics, which results from the percolating cluster. At the upper spectral edge, the behaviour is reversed.
We consider i.i.d. random variables {ω(b):b \in E_d} parameterized by the family of bonds in Z^d, d>1. The random variable ω(b) is thought of as the conductance of bond b and it ranges in a finite interval [0,c_0]. Assuming the probability m of the event {ω(b)>0} to be supercritical and denoting by C(ω) the unique infinite cluster associated to the bonds with positive conductance, we study the zero range process on C(ω) with ω(b)-proportional probability rate of jumps along bond b. For almost all realizations of the environment we prove that the hydrodynamic behavior of the zero range process …
We prove that the heavy clusters are indistinguishable for Bernoulli percolation on quasi-transitive nonunimodular graphs. As an application, we show that the uniqueness threshold of any quasi-transitive graph is also the threshold for connectivity decay. This resolves a question of Lyons and Schramm (1999) in the Bernoulli percolation case and confirms a conjecture of Schonmann (2001). We also prove that every infinite cluster of Bernoulli percolation on a nonamenable quasi-transitive graph is transient almost surely.
We prove that Bernoulli bond percolation on any nonamenable, Gromov hyperbolic, quasi-transitive graph has a phase in which there are infinitely many infinite clusters, verifying a well-known conjecture of Benjamini and Schramm (1996) under the additional assumption of hyperbolicity. In other words, we show that $p_c<p_u$ for any such graph. Our proof also yields that the triangle condition $\nabla_{p_c}<\infty$ holds at criticality on any such graph, which is known to imply that several critical exponents exist and take their mean-field values. This gives the first family of examples of one-e…
We construct an example of a bounded degree, nonamenable, unimodular random rooted graph with $p_c=p_u$ for Bernoulli bond percolation, as well as an example of a bounded degree, unimodular random rooted graph with $p_c<1$ but with an infinite cluster at criticality. These examples show that two well-known conjectures of Benjamini and Schramm are false when generalised from transitive graphs to unimodular random rooted graphs.
We show that on a Cayley graph of a nonamenable group, almost surely the infinite clusters of Bernoulli percolation are transient for simple random walk, that simple random walk on these clusters has positive speed, and that these clusters admit bounded harmonic functions. A principal new finding on which these results are based is that such clusters admit invariant random subgraphs with positive isoperimetric constant. We also show that percolation clusters in any amenable Cayley graph almost surely admit no nonconstant harmonic Dirichlet functions. Conversely, on a Cayley graph admitting non…
On the supercritical percolation cluster with parameter p, the distances between two distant points of the axis are asymptotically increased by a factor 1+(1-p)/2+o(1-p) with respect to the usual distance. The proof is based on an apparently new connection with the TASEP (totally asymmetric simple exclusion process).
We consider supercritical site percolation on the $d$-dimensional hypercube $Q^d$. We show that typically all components in the percolated hypercube, besides the giant, are of size $O(d)$. This resolves a conjecture of Bollobás, Kohayakawa, and Łuczak from 1994.
Previously, Sarkar and Sun have shown that for supercritical oriented percolation in dimension $1+1$, the set of rightmost infinite open paths converges to the Brownian web after proper centering and scaling. In this note, we show that a pair of sticky Brownian webs arise naturally if one considers the set of right-most infinite open paths for two coupled percolation configurations with distinct (but close) percolation parameters. This leads to a natural conjecture on the convergence of the dynamical supercritical oriented percolation model to the so-called dynamical Brownian web.
We investigate a limit theorem on traversable length inside semi-cylinder in the 2-dimensional supercritical Bernoulli bond percolation, which gives an extension of Theorem 2 in Grimmett(1981). This type of limit theorems was originally studied for the extinction time for the 1-dimensional contact process on a finite interval in Wagner and Anantharam(2005). Actually, our main result Theorem 2.1 is stated under a rather general 2-dimensional bond percolation setting.
We study the spectrum of adjacency matrices of random graphs. We develop two techniques to lower bound the mass of the continuous part of the spectral measure or the density of states. As an application, we prove that the spectral measure of bond percolation in the two dimensional lattice contains a non-trivial continuous part in the supercritical regime. The same result holds for the limiting spectral measure of a supercritical Erdos-Renyi graph and for the spectral measure of a unimodular random tree with at least two ends. We give examples of random graphs with purely continuous spectrum.
We exploit a connection between distances in the infinite percolation cluster, when the parameter is close to one, and the discrete-time TASEP on $\mathbb{Z}$. This shows that when the parameter goes to one, large balls in the cluster are asymptotically shaped near the axes like arcs of parabola.
Liouville first passage percolation (LFPP) with parameter $ξ>0$ is the family of random distance functions $\{D_h^ε\}_{ε>0}$ on the plane obtained by integrating $e^{ξh_ε}$ along paths, where $h_ε$ for $ε>0$ is a smooth mollification of the planar Gaussian free field. Previous work by Ding-Dubédat-Dunlap-Falconet and Gwynne-Miller has shown that there is a critical value $ξ_{\mathrm{crit}} > 0$ such that for $ξ< ξ_{\mathrm{crit}}$, LFPP converges under appropriate re-scaling to a random metric on the plane which induces the same topology as the Euclidean metric (the so-called $γ$-\emph{Liouvil…
We establish several equivalent characterisations of the anchored isoperimetric dimension of supercritical clusters in Bernoulli bond percolation on transitive graphs. We deduce from these characterisations together with a theorem of Duminil-Copin, Goswami, Raoufi, Severo, and Yadin that if $G$ is a transient transitive graph then the infinite clusters of Bernoulli percolation on $G$ are transient for $p$ sufficiently close to $1$. It remains open to extend this result down to the critical probability. Along the way we establish two new cluster repulsion inequalities that are of independent in…
We consider the model of random trees introduced by Devroye (1999), the so-called random split trees. The model encompasses many important randomized algorithms and data structures. We then perform supercritical Bernoulli bond-percolation on those trees and obtain a precise weak limit theorem for the sizes of the largest clusters. We also show that the approach developed in this work may be useful for studying percolation on other classes of trees with logarithmic height, for instance, we study also the case of $d$-regular trees.
We prove that, after centering and diffusively rescaling space and time, the collection of rightmost infinite open paths in a supercritical oriented percolation configuration on the space-time lattice Z^2_{even}:={(x,i) in Z^2: x+i is even} converges in distribution to the Brownian web. This proves a conjecture of Wu and Zhang. Our key observation is that each rightmost infinite open path can be approximated by a percolation exploration cluster, and different exploration clusters evolve independently before they intersect.
We consider Bernoulli bond percolation on a large scale-free tree in the supercritical regime, meaning informally that there exists a giant cluster with high probability. We obtain a weak limit theorem for the sizes of the next largest clusters, extending a recent result for large random recursive trees. The approach relies on the analysis of the asymptotic behavior of branching processes subject to rare neutral mutations, which may be of independent interest.
We consider the standard site percolation model on the three dimensional cubic lattice. Starting solely with the hypothesis that $θ(p)>0$, we prove that, for any $α>0$, there exists $κ>0$ such that, with probability larger than $1-1/n^α$, every pair of vertices inside the box $Λ(n)$ are joined by a path having at most $κ(\ln n)^2$ closed sites.
We consider an i.i.d. supercritical bond percolation on Z^d , every edge is open with a probability p > p\_c (d), where p\_c (d) denotes the critical parameter for this percolation. We know that there exists almost surely a unique infinite open cluster C\_p [11]. We are interested in the regularity properties of the chemical distance for supercritical Bernoulli percolation. The chemical distance between two points x, y $\in$ C\_p corresponds to the length of the shortest path in C\_p joining the two points. The chemical distance between 0 and nx grows asymptotically like n$μ$\_p (x). We aim to…
In this work we study the Poisson Boolean model of percolation in locally compact Polish metric spaces and we prove the invariance of subcritical and supercritical phases under mm-quasi-isometries. In other words, we prove that if the Poisson Boolean model of percolation is subcritical or supercritical (or exhibits phase transition) in a metric space M which is mm-quasi-isometric to a metric space N, then these phases also exist for the Poisson Boolean model of percolation in N. Then we apply these results to understand the phenomenon of phase transition in a large family of metric spaces. Ind…
We consider the cardinality of supercritical oriented bond percolation in two dimensions. We show that, whenever the origin is conditioned to percolate, the process appropriately normalized converges asymptotically in distribution to the standard normal law. This resolves a longstanding open problem pointed out to in several instances in the literature. The result applies also to the continuous-time analog of the process, viz. the basic one-dimensional contact process. We also derive general random-indices central limit theorems for associated random variables as byproducts of our proof.
We consider the simple random walk on supercritical percolation clusters in the multidimensional cubic lattice. In this model, a quenched large deviation principle holds for the position of the random walk. Its rate function depends on the law of the percolation configuration, and the aim of this paper is to study the continuity of the rate function in the law. To do this, it is useful that the rate function is expressed by the so-called Lyapunov exponent, which is the asymptotic cost paid by the random walk for traveling in a landscape of percolation configurations. In this context, we first …
We consider an i.i.d. supercritical bond percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, every edge is open with a probability $p > p_c (d)$, where $p_c (d)$ denotes the critical parameter for this percolation. We know that there exists almost surely a unique infinite open cluster $C_p$ [7]. We are interested in the regularity properties in p of the anchored isoperimetric profile of the infinite cluster $C_p$. For $d\ge2$, we prove that the anchored isoperimetric profile defined in [4] is Lipschitz continuous on all intervals $[p_0 , p_1 ] \subset (p_c (d), 1)$.
We obtain Gaussian upper and lower bounds on the transition density q_t(x,y) of the continuous time simple random walk on a supercritical percolation cluster C_{\infty} in the Euclidean lattice. The bounds, analogous to Aronsen's bounds for uniformly elliptic divergence form diffusions, hold with constants c_i depending only on p (the percolation probability) and d. The irregular nature of the medium means that the bound for q_t(x,\cdot) holds only for t\ge S_x(ω), where the constant S_x(ω) depends on the percolation configuration ω.
We consider $Z^d$, with d bigger or equal to three. We investigate the vacant set of random interlacements in the strongly percolative regime, the vacant set of the simple random walk, and the excursion set above a given level of the Gaussian free field in the strongly percolative regime. We derive asymptotic upper and lower exponential bounds for the large deviation probability that the adequately thickened component of the boundary of a large box centered at the origin in the respective vacant sets or excursion set leaves in the box a macroscopic volume in its complement. We also derive geom…
We show quenched large deviations for the simple random walk on a certain class of percolations with long-range correlations. This class contains the supercritical Bernoulli percolations, the model considered by Drewitz, R'ath and Sapozhnikov and the random-cluster model up to the slab critical point. Our result is an extension of Kubota's result for the supercritical Bernoulli percolations. We also state a shape theorem for the chemical distance, which is an extension of Garet and Marchand's result for the supercritical Bernoulli percolations.
We consider two different objects on super-critical Bernoulli percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ : the time constant for i.i.d. first-passage percolation (for $d\geq 2$) and the isoperimetric constant (for $d=2$). We prove that both objects are continuous with respect to the law of the environment. More precisely we prove that the isoperimetric constant of supercritical percolation in $\mathbb{Z}^2$ is continuous in the percolation parameter. As a corollary we prove that normalized sets achieving the isoperimetric constant are continuous with respect to the Hausdroff metric. Concerning first-passag…
We consider an anisotropic bond percolation model on $\mathbb{Z}^2$, with $\textbf{p}=(p_h,p_v)\in [0,1]^2$, $p_v>p_h$, and declare each horizontal (respectively vertical) edge of $\mathbb{Z}^2$ to be open with probability $p_h$(respectively $p_v$), and otherwise closed, independently of all other edges. Let $x=(x_1,x_2) \in \mathbb{Z}^2$ with $0<x_1<x_2$, and $x'=(x_2,x_1)\in \mathbb{Z}^2$. It is natural to ask how the two point connectivity function $\prob(\{0\leftrightarrow x\})$ behaves, and whether anisotropy in percolation probabilities implies the strict inequality $\prob(\{0\leftrighta…
Let $d\geq 2$. We consider an i.i.d. supercritical bond percolation on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, every edge is open with a probability $p>p_c(d)$, where $p_c(d)$ denotes the critical point. We condition on the event that $0$ belongs to the infinite cluster $\mathcal{C}_\infty$ and we consider connected subgraphs of $\mathcal{C}_\infty$ having at most $n^d$ vertices and containing $0$. Among these subgraphs, we are interested in the ones that minimize the open edge boundary size to volume ratio. These minimizers properly rescaled converge towards a translate of a deterministic shape and their open edge b…
Let $\mathcal{C}^n$ be the largest open cluster for supercritical Bernoulli bond percolation in $[-n, n]^d \cap \mathbb{Z}^d$ with $d \ge 2$. We obtain a sharp estimate for the effective resistance on $\mathcal{C}^n$. As an application we show that the cover time for the simple random walk on $\mathcal{C}^n$ is comparable to $n^d (\log n)^2$. Noting that the cover time for the simple random walk on $[-n, n]^d \cap \mathbb{Z}^d$ is of order $n^d \log n$ for $d \ge 3$ (and of order $n^2 (\log n)^2$ for $d = 2$), this gives a quantitative difference between the two random walks for $d \ge 3$.
We consider a directed random walk on the backbone of the supercritical oriented percolation cluster in dimensions $d+1$ with $d \ge 3$ being the spatial dimension. For this random walk we prove an annealed local central limit theorem and a quenched local limit theorem. The latter shows that the quenched transition probabilities of the random walk converge to the annealed transition probabilities reweighted by a function of the medium centred at the target site. This function is the density of the unique measure which is invariant for the point of view of the particle, is absolutely continuous…
We show that for any Cayley graph, the probability (at any $p$) that the cluster of the origin has size n decays at a well-defined exponential rate (possibly 0). For general graphs, we relate this rate being positive in the supercritical regime with the amenability/nonamenability of the underlying graph.
